


Catenae Cupiditatis

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dealfic, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Succubi & Incubi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:22:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 37,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some deals are better left unmade...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to my fabulous pitch-hitter betas! aynslee, extraonions, and stephanometra: this fic is _much_ better for your help. ::hugs wonderful betas::

She wasn’t difficult to find once they knew what they were dealing with. Dean just strolled into North Kerr Sports Pub wearing a worn, cobalt t-shirt and sat down at the bar to wait. Curled his lips around the mouth of his beer bottle and nursed it like he was suckling on a nipple.

He brushed off three women (and damn, that last one, all curves and dark hair and sultry eyes, had _hurt_ ) before she pressed up along his back in a long, scorching line. Heat flooded Dean as a hand slid underneath his shirt and fingers splayed across his stomach. One of her nails scraped his skin and he made a choked noise as all the blood in his body immediately tried to rush down to his dick. She’d barely touched him and he was beyond hard: was desperate and hungry and wanting nothing more than to grab her and shove to the floor and fuck her right there. He gripped the edge of the bar to anchor himself and his breath shuddered out in a low exhale.

“Hey there, beautiful,” she purred, her lips just brushing against the shell of his ear. Violet mist fogged the world at the sound of that toffee-thick voice. Henricksen could have been tap dancing on the bar with fifteen of his handpicked agents and Dean wouldn’t have noticed.

He tilted his head to the side just enough for the edge of her face to slide into view. He noted one blue eye, and the curving line of one smooth cheek. Even taken in fragments, she was too beautiful to be real. Too perfect. He knew what she really looked like under there, of course: knew that her eyes were indigo and not blue, that her skin wasn’t this warm, bronzed color but a frigid sable. But those scrawny, elongated limbs were difficult to remember when her hands were on him. When her tongue was darting out to lick along his cheekbone and her fingers were curling against his stomach.

It was the venom, of course. 'Siren song', was what all of the hunters he knew called it. She didn’t need the skin on skin contact to infect him, but it helped. Oh God, did it ever help.

“Yeah,” Dean groaned in answer to a question she hadn’t needed to ask. He saw the edge of her mouth—soft, looked so soft, would be so warm and wet and tight in there—turn up in a sly smile.

“You got a place?” she asked, her words sinking in through his skin and into his blood.

Dean shuddered against her. “Fuck yeah.”

She moved her right hand out from underneath his shirt so that he could get up off of the stool, but her left was resting against the back of his neck, her thumbnail scraping over the base of his spine. The siren song was resonating inside of him now: was roaring through his veins like fire.

Dean couldn’t see much more than a few feet in front of himself as she steered him toward the door; everything else had disappeared in that heavy, violet fog. He would crash for sure if he tried to drive them anywhere like this, but he knew that she wouldn’t let that happen. She wanted her meal, after all, not a smear on the pavement.

Sure enough, that overwhelming _need_ eased once Dean was behind the wheel, even though she was pressed up alongside of him, her mouth nipping at his throat like she was a goddamned vampire instead of a succubus. Her hands snaked underneath his shirt as he pulled out of the parking lot, roaming across his stomach and then up to his chest. Her nails flicked across his nipples, drawing low moans from his mouth. If she didn’t lay off soon then he really _was_ going to drive them off the road.

 _Just a few more minutes,_ he thought sluggishly. _Get back to the motel; get her—oh,_ God _—inside._ Sam was waiting there, ready to take the bitch out the instant they walked in the door.

“Turn here.”

That low, throaty command hummed through his skin, and Dean found himself turning the car onto the narrow dirt path. There was still enough of his mind left for him to break out in a cold sweat as he drove away from the main road. He was supposed to take her back to the motel, that was the damned thing’s M.O., that was the whole reason Sam had agreed to let Dean be bait in the first place, and Jesus was it dark in here. The path kept narrowing, and the drooping trees on either side were slinking closer, and it was just his luck that he was too tempting to wait for.

“Stop here and turn off the car, Dean.”

Fuck.

 _She knows your name, Winchester. That wasn’t in the game plan, was it?_ No, of course it wasn’t: none of this was even in the same zip code as the goddamn game plan. He needed to turn the car around Right Fucking Now and get her to the motel.

Except he wasn’t. Instead, he was slowing to a stop and putting the car in park and then turning the engine off.

Dean had time to blink once and then she was in his lap, grinding down against his erection and not even bothering to unzip his jeans. The last of his survival instinct went numb as she tugged his shirt off, those hands of hers everywhere on his skin. He’d been dosed by a succubus before, but not for this long. He hadn’t known it could be this intense: that he could want anything so much.

He was panting, his hands limp and nerveless on the seat beside him because he was too turned on to move. Was too fucked up to do anything other than twitch his hips against her and hope that she got it over with quickly. The succubus arched her back and brought her head down to clamp her mouth over one of his nipples. She bit down hard enough to draw blood and Dean hissed, his hands opening and closing fruitlessly against worn leather.

“Come for me,” she murmured. Her tongue lapped at his skin, drinking in his sweat and that faint trickle of blood and thirsty for more. Parched and starved for something else.

 _No,_ he thought, but the word fragmented into a thousand jagged pieces as she wormed a hand into his jeans. She’d barely gotten a grip on him before he was coming. He could hear choked, hurt noises filling the car as he tried to get enough motor control to thrust through her hand, and knew that they were probably coming from him. Didn’t care as the world filmed over in violet, that mist wrapping around him and carrying him away.

It took Dean a few minutes to reassemble his thoughts: to realize that he was sitting in the car with his head thrown back against the seat and his jeans open and the succubus curled up in his lap like a goddamned cat as she lazily stroked him back to hardness. Against all expectation or hope, he wasn’t dead.

The succubus’ hand clenched into a fist around his cock and Dean sucked in a sharp breath. She laughed, nuzzling at his throat. “I’m gonna take my time with you, Dean. Gonna spill you out over and over until it hurts and then … then we’re really gonna have some fun. You and me until the sun comes up.”

Anger flared in the pit of Dean’s stomach, clearing the mist enough for him to open his mouth and whisper, “Bitch.”

“Oh, honey. Sweet talk will get you nowhere.”

“How about a shotgun blast to the face?” Sam? Was that—Jesus, was that _Sam_?

Dean rolled his eyes to the side and saw his brother standing next to the car. Sam’s face was dark and furious, and he was aiming a shotgun at the succubus through the window. For once, Dean was really fucking thankful that his brother had ignored the plan they’d both agreed on. Sam must have stolen a car and followed Dean to the bar, watched him come out and then … Dean lost his train of thought as the succubus, grinning, tightened her grip and dragged another groan from him.

Sam’s eyes went almost black as he cocked the gun. “Off him. Now.”

“That won’t kill me,” she pointed out, and flicked her thumb, slippery with semen, over the head of Dean’s dick.

Dean bit down on his lip and concentrated on not coming. He didn’t think she’d take him if he did, but that suspicion made him even less anxious to grey out again. The bitch was planning something, and whatever it was, he needed to be alert for it.

Sam pulled the trigger and the window shattered, pouring glass shards into Dean’s lap like rain. He followed immediately with the second barrel and the succubus shrieked, hurt and angry: Sam must have loaded it with those blessed shells Bobby had given them. Whatever he’d used, it hurt the succubus enough that she let go of Dean. Sam immediately reached in through the shattered window and hauled him out.

Dean rolled out onto the ground, bleeding where the glass had cut him and weak as a newborn colt. The succubus hadn’t killed him with that first orgasm, but she’d sure as hell taken enough so that he couldn’t struggle and cause problems. That damned siren song was still rolling through him, too, making it difficult to think about anything other than his aching cock.

Sam looped one arm underneath Dean’s armpit and hauled him to his feet. “You okay?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the succubus writhing in the car.

“Fantastic,” Dean panted. “Now kill the bitch already.”

Sam obediently dropped the shotgun and pulled out a flask of holy water, still holding Dean against him with one arm. The succubus was beginning to get herself back under control, and when she looked up to find Sam thumbing the cap off the flask, her eyes widened.

“Wait!” she hissed. Sam ignored her and started in on the chant that would render her helpless, Latin smooth and easy on his tongue, and she shuddered in pain. “I can save him!” she yelled, hunching in on herself.

Sam faltered.

“Keep going,” Dean muttered, trying unsuccessfully to get his legs to support his weight.

“I can save your brother, Samuel Winchester,” the succubus repeated, sounding a little surer, and this time Sam stopped.

Dean’s heart pounded painfully in his chest. “What the hell are you doing? Finish it!”

But instead Sam said, “You can get him out of his deal? How?”

“Don’t be a fucking moron!”

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam said absently, and then, louder: “Talk fast.”

“A trade,” the succubus replied, and climbed out the broken window to lean against the side of the car. Bitch made the awkward motion look like exotic dancing. “I know his contractor. We’re old friends: kissing cousins, you might say.”

Dean thought of the demon’s tongue in his mouth—not once but twice, and how nasty was _that_?—and figured that the succubus was telling the truth about the crossroad bitch. Not that it mattered because she was gonna be toast in a minute. “Give me the flask,” he growled, reaching for it with one hand. If Sam wasn’t going to finish this, then Dean damn well was.

Sam didn’t even look at him: only shifted his grip and tilted Dean further to the side. Dean swore, but was too weak to do anything except eye the flask that was now tantalizingly out of reach. Which had probably been the bitch’s plan all along.

“And you’d do this in exchange for what?” Sam prodded.

The succubus’ gaze lowered to trace over Dean’s flushed face, his bare chest. “Nothing he wouldn’t already be doing.” Her lips twitched up into a voluptuous smile. “You’d enjoy it, Dean. Best sex of your life.”

“Fuck you,” he spat, and then Sam was changing his hold again, twisting his hand around to clamp it over Dean’s mouth. Dean tried to glare up at his brother and Sam still refused to look at him, the asshole.

“No more word games,” Sam said. “Tell me what you want now or this conversation is over.” He jiggled the flask of holy water meaningfully.

“No need to play rough.” The succubus ran her fingers along the Impala’s roof and Dean shivered at the phantom sensation of her touch along the underside of his dick. Goddamned siren song.

“I’ll arrange for your brother’s freedom, Sam, and in return all he needs to do is provide me with a little nourishment.”

Sam’s arm around Dean tightened almost painfully at that. “You can’t have him.”

The succubus laughed. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. He’s tasty, sure, but there’s only so much of him to go around, and I’m a difficult woman to satisfy.”

Dean could tell from the way that his brother was standing that Sam was still clueless, but he was getting the picture loud and clear, and hell no. No fucking way.

“What _did_ you mean, then?” Sam asked.

Smiling at Dean, the succubus answered, “He feeds for me. Once a month, every month.” She licked her lips then, leaning back to wait.

And Sam wasn’t telling her to fuck off. Sam was actually _considering_ this, and goddamn it, didn’t _Dean_ have any say here?

“Dean won’t kill people to save himself,” Sam said, like it was some kind of _failing_ , and Dean was totally going to kick his brother’s ass as soon as he could manage to stand on his own.

“He doesn’t have to. He only has to take as much as he wants. Of course, I’m going to need a life’s worth every month, so he’ll have to work overtime if he wants to be noble about this.”

 _Tell her to fuck off, Sam,_ Dean thought, but his brother just said, “Dean’s not … he’s not into guys.”

The succubus shrugged. “Men, women: they all taste the same in the dark, don’t they?”

And Sam was going to take that how he wanted, but Dean understood _exactly_ what she meant. Bitch knew that he wasn’t all that particular when it came to sex, as long as the body was warm and willing and easy on the eyes. His spine tingled with a trapped feeling, like she’d been maneuvering for this ever since she laid eyes on him in the bar. She’d known his name, known about the deal. This whole thing was a goddamned setup.

 **You’re smarter than you look, sugar.** Her words thrumming through his blood, making his pulse speed. Her smile was private and just for him. **But really, I only just came up with this little idea when I found such a scrumptious treat in my pantry. The famous Dean Winchester, all needy and desperate with his time almost up.**

 _Bitch,_ he thought. _You fucking cunt, I’m gonna kill you._

Her smile widened a little. **Save all that energy. I think you’re going to need it.**

“That’s it?” Sam said suddenly. “You want him to have sex for you? With women? And he doesn’t have to kill anyone?”

Of course that wasn’t it, nothing was ever that simple, and how the hell could Sam be this stupid? But Dean already knew the answer to that. Sam was being deliberately stupid because he _wanted_ to believe. Because he’d been hunting for a way to save Dean for the past eleven months and time was running out. The countdown was numbered in weeks now: in days. Sam was desperate enough to believe anything.

“I know, I know,” the succubus trilled. “It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But I’m a sucker for a pretty face.”

Dean bit down on his brother’s palm and Sam jerked his hand away with a curse. “Screw you!” Dean spat while his brother shook his hand out. “I’m not doing shit for you, I’m not—” Sam’s hand clamped back over his mouth and this time, when Dean bit down, Sam only grimaced and let him.

“Do it,” Sam said, and Dean went as haywire as he could, struggling against his brother’s grasp, while the succubus’ laughter echoed in his head.

 **You’re mine now,** she purred.

 _Like hell I am! I didn’t agree to anything; I didn’t—_

 **Oh, but _Sammy_ agreed. And really, that’s good enough for me. **

_I won’t do it. I’ll be a fucking monk if I have to._

 **I don’t think so. Same bargain, Dean. You renege on the contract, try and keep me from what’s mine, and Sammy goes back to being a maggot-infested corpse. My word to you.**

Dean fumed, unable to come up with an articulate response to that, and the succubus winked at him. The fire of arousal in his blood sharpened and he hunched against Sam’s arm, panting wetly against his brother’s hand. When the wave passed, his head felt clearer, but there was something … oh _fuck_ , something hungry and dark and _wrong_ inside of him. Goddamn it, he was gonna kill Sam.

“All done,” the succubus announced. “I’d ask you boys for a lift back to town, but under the circumstances I think I’ll walk.” And then she turned around and started away, rolling her hips as she went.

Sam held Dean until she was out of sight and then, finally, took his hand away from Dean’s mouth and half-carried him to the Impala. Dean could finally speak and couldn’t find anything to say. Sam had just sold him out, the selfish bastard. Sam had just … just whored him out to that succubus bitch, and … and …

“Sorry about the window,” Sam said as he lowered Dean into the passenger seat.

“The window?” Dean repeated incredulously. “You’re sorry about the fucking _window_?”

Sam ducked his head and had the decency to look guilty. But in the next instant his mouth had firmed and his eyes narrowed with determination. “Yeah, I’m sorry about the window.” And not about anything else, that was clear as daylight in the tone of Sam’s voice.

Dean gaped at his brother as Sam shut the door and went around to the driver’s side, sweeping shards of glass off the seat before settling in. He sat quietly while Sam drove, letting the anger build in his gut and gathering what strength he could. When they got back to the motel and Sam came around the side of the car, leaning down to pull Dean out, Dean hauled back and punched him.

Then he collapsed back against the seat, muttered, “You asshole,” and passed out.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, waiting for his brother to wake up. Dean was going to be pissed—correction: Dean was _already_ pissed, and Sam had the aching jaw to prove it. But he couldn’t find it in himself to give a shit.

Dean had been dying—worse, he’d been damned. He’d been sprinting toward his deadline and not helping Sam try to find some kind of loophole at _all_. Dean’s behavior—like he hadn’t _wanted_ to be saved—had been driving Sam nuts, and then this opportunity just … just fell into their laps and Dean had the gall to say ‘no’. Sam realized that his breath was coming fast and shallow and he ran his hands through his hair. Looked like Dean wasn’t the only one who was angry.

How the hell could he have expected Sam to pass up that chance, anyway? Yeah, okay, maybe it was a little amoral to make a deal with the succubus they’d come here to destroy, but it wasn’t like Dean was going to be doing anything _wrong_. He wasn’t going to kill anyone, after all: wasn’t going to do anything, as the succubus had pointed out, that he wouldn’t have done anyway.

Hell, he must have had half a dozen girls in his bed in the last month alone. Sure, the women he fed on would feel weak for a few days—like they’d caught the flu or a really bad cold—but then they’d perk back up. The energy Dean took from them would replenish completely within a couple of weeks, and Dean wouldn’t be a box of ashes in the Impala’s glove compartment.

Fair fucking trade.

Sam knew that he was a little biased _(selfish)_ when it came to Dean, but he was almost positive that his decision to accept the deal had been completely rational. It wasn’t like he was asking Dean to trade the lives of strangers to keep himself alive and breathing—not that he would have hesitated, if that was what it took. And Sam wasn’t going to apologize to Dean for thinking that his brother deserved better than a lonely pyre and an eternity in Hell.

Dean groaned in his sleep and Sam leaned across the space between their beds to briefly rest his hand against his brother’s forehead. Dean’s skin was warmer than it should have been, but he wasn’t sweating, and he didn’t look sick. His expression was unnaturally quiet and peaceful, actually: his head twisted to the side while he lay motionless on his back where Sam had placed him. That position was all wrong—he should have been sprawled out on his stomach, all angles and ruffled hair—but Sam figured that Dean hadn’t regained enough strength to move around much.

For all that Sam suspected that the succubus had picked Dean up in the bar with the express purpose of making that deal with him—that she never intended to hurt him—she hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to have a little taste. She’d laid her hands on his skin, and listened to those choked little moans he made, and just had to drink him down like a fucking thousand-dollar glass of Eiswein.

God help him, but Sam couldn’t really blame her.

She’d known it, too. He remembered her sloe-dark eyes on him as she murmured, _‘Men, women: they all taste the same in the dark, don’t they?’_ Remembered seeing the knowledge behind those pointed words.

Somehow, the succubus had known about the nights he’d spent thrusting into hard bodies, pretending they were Dean. Wishing they were his brother. About the times Jessica had wrapped her mouth around him, and he’d kept his eyes tightly shut so that he could imagine that those were Dean’s lips, that that was Dean’s tongue. He’d loved Jessica, he really had, and that only made those memories of betrayal— _of her? of Dean?_ —more painful.

Shame had filled Sam at the succubus’ insinuating gaze: shame and a bitter longing for something he was never going to have. But the tightness in his chest had eased almost immediately as he realized that he could _take_ what he wanted now, with Dean shuddering against his arm, trapped and drugged by the succubus’ venom. He could press his mouth against his brother’s and Dean wouldn’t be able to stop him. Dean would _kiss back_ , even if he’d be sick about it later, when he was himself again.

It had taken Sam almost a full minute of standing there with his heart pounding in his throat to grasp that the succubus was putting those thoughts into his head. That she was stroking his desire: was fanning it into a mind-numbing blaze. She’d wanted him to shove Dean up against the side of the Impala and take him—would have gotten off on watching, probably would have taken a little sip from Sam as well before sealing the deal. He’d almost been able to taste her disappointment when he managed to shove the deafening need away and focused on the business at hand. On saving Dean, not breaking him.

Sam was selfish, and he was a sick bastard for wanting his older brother like that, but he wasn’t a goddamned rapist.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to strip Dean’s jeans and boxers off and slide him into some clean sweats, though. He hadn’t trusted himself with the succubus’ call so close to the surface. Hadn’t trusted himself with Dean looking, impossible as it seemed, even more enticing than before.

With his brother pulled tightly against his side, Sam had _felt_ the change happen: felt Dean’s pulse spike and his breathing go ragged. He hadn’t actually seen what the succubus had done to his brother until they were back at the motel, though. Until he’d gone around the side of the car to help Dean out and Dean had looked up, tilting his face directly into the harsh glare of the streetlamps.

It had been too unexpected—too striking—for Sam to do more than gape at the cumulative effect. Dean should have looked like crap as exhausted and as angry as he was, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d been this wanton, needy, dangerous creature—too beautiful, too _perfect_ , to be human—and Sam had been too busy telling his dick to back off even to notice his brother’s fist heading toward his face.

Now, as Sam reluctantly took his hand back from Dean’s forehead, he studied his brother and tried to catalogue the changes that the deal— _Sam’s_ deal, since Dean had been too stupid or stubborn to make it for himself—had wrought. Maybe looking at the alterations in isolation would make it easier for him to resist their overall lure.

Dean’s skin, which admittedly remained pale even after he’d spent hours out in the sun, had taken on an alabaster glow; it was as though a soft, white light shone just beneath the surface. His freckles were more pronounced against it: flecks of toffee spattered across the bridge of his nose.

Those almost girlish lips were fuller than they should have been; they looked bruised, as though Dean had spent a few hours making out with an enthusiastic partner. Or possibly sucking on something a little more responsive _(Jesus, Sam, don’t go there)_.

His short hair gleamed, and Sam knew from several accidental brushes while he was maneuvering Dean into bed that it was rabbit-soft, despite the copious amounts of gel he’d seen his brother apply before heading out to the bar. Dean’s lashes seemed even longer than normal, and his eyes were crystalline: moss flecked with lighter jags of electric lime.

Wait, his _eyes_? Oh, shit.

“You fucking asshole,” Dean groaned. He looked like he wanted to punch Sam again, but couldn’t muster up the strength.

Sam dropped his own eyes to stare at his hands, which were resting uselessly in his lap. Had he given himself away while he was studying Dean’s face, or was this just more of the expected hostility from before? Heart beating too quickly and throat painfully tight, Sam wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

Then Dean continued, bitterly, “You sold me out,” and Sam’s chest eased.

“I wasn’t going to let you die if there was a way to save you,” he said.

“ _Save me?_ ” Dean’s breath huffed out in a hostile laugh. “You just signed me up for the other team, you son of a bitch.”

Jesus, Dean was just about the most ungrateful guy on the planet, wasn’t he? “It’s not—you don’t have to kill anyone, and it’s not like you don’t—”

“Heard that pitch the first time around, and it wasn’t any more convincing then,” Dean interrupted, and now that Sam wasn’t preoccupied by the fear that Dean had uncovered his nasty little secret, he realized that his brother’s voice had changed as well. Lowered into a half-growl, half-purr, it lapped against Sam’s skin like a cat’s tongue.

Drawing his own anger around him as a shield against his brother’s pull, he raised his head. “So what, you’d rather die and let that crossroads demon take you down to Hell, is that it?”

Dean’s eyes were blazing: his brow furrowed. “I thought that was pretty clear when I told that bitch to fuck off.”

Yeah, it had been—maddeningly clear. “What the hell is it going to take for you to understand that I’m not losing you?” Sam demanded, pushing to his feet. “Did you honestly think that I was going to let you throw away the only chance we found the whole year?”

“You didn’t have the goddamned right!”

“And you did?” Sam shouted back. “Cause I don’t really remember you asking my permission before you sold your soul.”

Dean’s eyes slid to the side, and it was like a weight lifted from Sam’s skin. “You weren’t exactly around to ask, were you, Sam?”

And he was _not_ using _that_ as an excuse. Sam squared his jaw and curled his hands into fists, resisting the urge to grab his brother and try shaking some sense into him. “Don’t give me that crap,” he snapped. “You knew what I would have said when you did it.”

“At least I didn’t bargain with anything that wasn’t mine to sell!” Dean returned, struggling to sit up in the bed.

 _Neither did I_ , Sam wanted to shoot back, because Dean _was_ his—Dean had _always_ been his—and whether they acknowledged it or not, they both knew it. He swallowed the words before they could slip out, though. With Dean looking like he did now—with whatever the succubus had done to him still strong and new on his body—Sam wasn’t sure that the words would come out right. Wasn’t sure that _‘you’re mine’_ wouldn’t take on a meaning that would disgust and repulse his brother.

After a few moments of searching for something else to say, he finally settled on, “I told you I was going to save you, Dean. And I kept my word. If you want to toss that deal down the toilet, then—then fine. I won’t stop you. I won’t try to save you again.”

Dean had managed to pull himself up so that he was sitting with his back to the headboard, and now his lips curled in a bitter little smile. “Serve you right if I did, you asshole.”

Something in his brother’s tone of voice caught Sam’s attention and he frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sighing, Dean let his eyes fall shut. “It means whatever it sounds like,” he said softly, which wasn’t any kind of answer at all.

Sam sat down on his brother’s bed and reached toward him, starting, “Dean, just tell—”

“Get your fucking hand off me,” Dean growled.

Sam jerked back as though he’d been burned. “Sorry, I—”

“Shut up,” Dean said, but he didn’t sound angry anymore. He sounded exhausted: world-weary and drained. “Just … go rescue a puppy or something.”

“Dean, I—”

“Please, Sammy.” And Dean only begged when he was so desperate—so close to breaking down—that another word would shatter all that iron self-control he was always so determined to maintain.

Feeling sick to his stomach, Sam pushed himself to his feet. “Okay,” he whispered. He didn’t look back as he took himself outside, and he wasn’t sure whether that was because he couldn’t bear to see Dean looking so damned hurt, or because he’d been about a second away from pressing his brother down into the bed and kissing that wounded expression off of his face.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

If he concentrated, Dean could make himself look almost normal again, instead of like some sexed up freak. He was practicing in the bathroom mirror when Sam slunk back in the next afternoon, and at the sound of the front door opening, he relaxed for the first time since he’d chased his brother from the room.

He’d almost picked up his cell and called Sam a hundred times in the intervening hours, wanting to know where his brother was and what he was doing—wanting to know that he was safe. In the end he’d restrained himself. Mainly because he was still plenty pissed and he knew that he’d end up yelling at Sam again over the phone. _Pointless goddamned argument_ , he thought now, watching his eyes blaze out from his face as his concentration slipped.

“Dean?” Sam called tentatively from the bedroom.

After a moment of hesitation—he still wasn’t sure that he was ready to deal with his brother—Dean answered, “I’m in here.”

Sam appeared in the bathroom doorway, holding a bottle of Coke in one hand and a greasy McDonalds’ bag in the other. “I, uh, thought you might be hungry,” he offered, not quite meeting Dean’s eyes.

Dean briefly considered punching Sam and then plucking the bribe from his brother’s unconscious fingers, but in the end he just reached out and took them instead. “Thanks,” he grunted, edging past Sam and into the bedroom.

He headed over to the table and then carefully lowered himself into one of the chairs—he still wasn’t quite up to snuff after that bitch had snacked on him last night. When he opened the bag, he found four burgers, two large fries, and one of those apple pie desert things. Sam was feeling pretty guilty, then. Good. Dean unwrapped one of the burgers and dug in, ignoring his brother as he sat down in the other chair.

“You look better,” Sam commented.

Dean snorted around a mouthful of food. “Yeah, I didn’t think it was possible either, but hell, I’d fuck _myself_ now.” Swallowing, he glanced up in time to see Sam flush.

“That’s not wha—”

“I know what you meant.” If the asshole thought he’d be able to smooth this over with a Coke and a few burgers, then he was sorely mistaken.

“Should I leave again?” Sam asked quietly.

“No. I want you where I can see you. Don’t want you bargaining away anything else of mine.”

“Dean—”

“Next thing you’ll be selling the Impala for spare parts.”

“Dean, _I’m sorry_ , okay?”

Dean wolfed down the last piece of the first burger and leaned back in his chair. “Are you?”

Sam stared at him as he licked his fingers clean, probably wondering how he could possibly be related to someone so crude, and then dropped his gaze to the table. After a moment, he cleared his throat and admitted, “I’m sorry that this—that you’re upset. I’m not sorry I did it.”

Dean laughed sourly and shook his head as he helped himself to a second burger. Felt like he hadn’t eaten in a month. He wondered if that was because the succubus bitch had fed off of him or because she’d changed him.

“Is it really that bad?” Sam pressed. “I mean, would you seriously rather be in Hell than—than—you know.”

“Than play incubus a few times a month?” Dean filled in, and Sam nodded. Dean wanted to lie and say yes—wanted to see the hurt flash over Sam’s face—and resisted the impulse. Fucking _awesome_ big brother. He concentrated on his burger, hoping that Sam would just drop it. Fat chance.

“Would you?”

Dean took another bite, swallowed, and then said, “I don’t know.”

“Why?” Sam pressed. “It’s not like you have to—”

“Have to what? Kill someone? Rape them?” Dean spat the words at Sam and felt a twinge of bitter satisfaction when his brother flinched. “How do you know I won’t?”

“She said—”

Oh, for crying out loud. “ _‘She’_ was a goddamned demon. You really think she was gonna make a deal that sweet?” When Sam kept his mouth shut in a thin line, Dean leaned forward and added, “Here’s a little tip, Sammy, in case you ever feel tempted to do any more bargaining: the demon always gets the better end of it. _Always_.”

“She _is_ getting something out it, Dean,” Sam argued. “She’s getting power. She’ll be stronger, harder to kill—”

“If you think that’s all she’s expecting to get, then you’re even dumber than you look.”

“Then don’t do it,” Sam returned. He sounded tired. “If you’d rather be damned, then—”

There was just enough of Dean’s anger—of his need to hurt Sam for what he’d done—left for him to say, “If I renege on the deal, you’ll die.”

Sam jerked. His knee bumped the table and knocked the Coke off onto the floor, where it gurgled out into the carpet. Neither one of them moved to pick it up.

“What?” Sam finally said in a strangled voice.

“That was part of my original deal. I try and get out of it and that crossroads bitch would kill you again.”

“That’s why you never helped,” Sam blurted, realization and horror spreading across his face. “All this time I thought that you—that you thought you _deserved_ it or something—” Dean shifted uncomfortably. “—but you were just—she used me to—”

“Yeah.”

Sam kicked back from the table and scrambled to his feet. Ran his hands through his hair as he paced across the room. “Jesus, Dean!”

Dean sat where he was, waiting for Sam to work it through in his head. He already knew what conclusion his noble, self-sacrificing brother was going to reach, but it took Sam less time than he’d expected to get there; he was only halfway through the first box of fries when Sam finally came to a stop and turned to face him.

Squaring his shoulders, Sam said, “Don’t do it. It’ll—I’m supposed to be dead anyway, and this way you’ll be free and you won’t have to—”

“No.”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘no’?” Sam shouted.

“You think I went through all that just to have you drop dead again? Screw that shit.”

“Dean, please—I can’t—if you don’t want to, and I’m—I’m responsible for changing the deal—then I—”

 _Then you just fucked me over worse than any demon ever did._ “Good to know you’re finally catching up to the rest of the class,” Dean said dryly.

Sam’s throat worked for a few moments and then he asked, “This is what you meant, isn’t it? About the deal and there being some kind of—of hidden catch?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Dean muttered. That was a lie—Sam’s guilt wasn’t nearly bad enough to be the hidden catch, foul and rotting, that was waiting to strangle them—but Sam looked so shattered and remorseful that he couldn’t bring himself to say anything else. The last of his hostile, hurtful anger seemed to have drained away with his revelation, leaving him feeling trapped and lost and, distantly, a little horny.

Fanfuckingtastic.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Just in case the succubus had been lying—although it didn’t seem very likely—Dean refused to so much as kiss anyone until after the deadline of his first deal had come and gone. If the crossroads bitch was just going to grab him anyway, then the succubus sure as hell wasn’t getting any free snacks before he died. But the day that should have been Dean’s last passed uneventfully, and by the time midnight rolled around, he was starting to relax.

Despite his fears about the deal with the succubus—which he was coming more and more to think of as _his_ deal, rather than Sam’s—he was relieved that no one was popping up to drag him down to Hell. _Well, I guess that answers Sam’s question,_ he thought, watching the clock from his place on one of the beds. Sam, his broad back tense, was staring blankly at his laptop. _Guess I would rather be whored out than spend eternity getting my flesh peeled off by red-hot pokers._

The clock ticked over to 12:01 and Dean opened his mouth to say, _‘Looks like I’m off the hook.’_ Before he could manage it, the sickening scent of sulfur burned through the air and Sam slumped forward over the laptop. Dean jumped off the bed and sprinted over to his brother.

“Sammy!” he shouted, fumbling for a pulse. “Sam!”

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” purred a throaty voice behind him.

Dean glanced back to see an unfamiliar dark-haired woman leaning against the wall. Curving, full-figured body: black cocktail dress. Eyes that burned brilliant red for a moment before fading back to soft brown.

“What did you do to him?” Dean demanded.

“Your brother’s just fine, Dean. He’s only sleeping. I didn’t think you’d want him here for this.” She stepped away from the wall and slunk closer.

Dean’s stomach twisted as he moved to put himself between the demon and his brother. Seemed that the succubus had been lying after all. “Come to collect?” he asked, trying to ignore the sickening taste of panic in his mouth.

The demon’s lips curved into a wide smile as she came to a stop inches away from him. “My cousin already paid for you,” she breathed. “Sweet little twins, only twelve years old and needing so much _personal_ attention.”

“You fucking bitch.”

“Of course,” the demon continued, unperturbed, “I think I may have gotten the short end of the stick on that one.” She leaned into him, her breath hot on his neck, and Dean held himself as still as he was able. He felt that alien part of him reacting to her presence, and the siren song burned out past his control to etch itself on his skin. His corruption, there for everyone to see.

“You were delectable before,” the demon murmured. “Now …” Her tongue brushed against his throat: a feathered touch he barely felt. “ … now you’re just _sinful_.”

“If you’re not gonna take me, then get the hell out,” he growled.

She laughed and backed away, but didn’t leave. Instead, she started to circle him, her eyes tracing across his body. “Oh yes, this suits you. Some of my cousins aren’t this delicious. Then again, they don’t have that air of desperation—that _need_ to be saved. To be loved. It’s quite a turn on for us girls.” One of her fingernails traced across the back of his neck, raising goose bumps. “I’m almost tempted to take you for a spin myself.”

Dean offered her a bland smile. “Sweetheart, I’d sooner fuck a pig.”

The demon’s face twisted with rage—eyes narrowing, mouth snarling—and then cleared again. Her lips drew up into a saccharine sweet smile. “How long before he can’t resist anymore, I wonder, with you looking like that?” she asked. “How long before he can’t help himself and just _has_ to have you?”

Dean frowned. He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he was positive that he didn’t want to know.

“He’s been fantasizing about it for years,” she continued, face brightening with cruel pleasure. “Dreaming of that soft mouth of yours, wondering if you’d ever let him fuck you. Think he’d be jealous of all those men who’ve tasted what he can only imagine?”

The fingertip resting on his neck trailed down his spine and Dean stepped away from her, shivering. “Hands off the merchandise,” he grumbled.

Chuckling throatily, she followed him. Damned demons and their inability to grasp the concept of personal space.

“These past few weeks have been driving him insane, you know. Especially when you forget to concentrate. Why, just last night, he stayed up half the night watching you sleep. Wondering if you’d wake up if he kissed you, light as feather …”

Dean’s eyes flickered to Sam and then back to the demon again. “You’re lying,” he said flatly.

“You think so?” She tilted her head. “Do you know that sometimes, when Jessica used to suck him, he’d close his eyes and imagine it was you?”

 _Hot air, shine of sun on sweat-slicked muscles, scent of overheated metal._

 _No!_ Dean thought, shoving the half-glimpsed, long-suppressed memory away. The demon was opening her mouth to say something else—she was going to shove him straight into that blinding sunlight—and he burst into motion.

Spinning, he grabbed the demon by the shoulders and slammed her into the nearest wall. She could probably drop him with a word, could rip him apart from the inside out without even breaking a sweat, but he didn’t give a damn right now. He just needed to stop the vile flow of lies coming from her mouth. He needed not to remember.

“That’s more like it,” she panted up at him. “Come on, Dean, give me ride.” And she rolled her hips against him, fast and wanton.

Dean tightened his grip on her arms, tilting his body away, but that dark place inside of him had sparked up again. Desperate hunger flooded him, fogging his mind with violet and making it difficult to see straight, let alone think.

“I’ll be keeping my eye on you,” the demon whispered. “I have a feeling this is going to be _fun_.” Then her mouth opened and a sooty, black cloud swept past her lips and whirled away underneath the door. Dean found himself holding a groggy woman who was blinking at him in confusion.

“Where—” she started, and then her eyes glazed over as the siren song, singing out of him at full pitch, sunk into her.

 _No,_ he thought, but she was already on him, pressing their lips together and trying to force her way into his mouth with helpless mewling noises. The hunger ignited, burning Dean’s resistance to ash, and he kissed the nameless woman back desperately, draping his body over hers and pressing her back against the wall. He needed, he wanted, he was ravenous.

The hunger latched onto the woman, he began to feed, and then an oversized hand closed over his arm and yanked him away. “Dean, stop!” someone shouted, and it was Sam. The hunger flicker-flared inside of him, threaded through with horrible bursts of sun-drenched memory. Of a wide, green lawn, and laughter, and the soft, almost unimportant sound of something being unzipped.

 _Stop. Jesus, stop!_ he thought, struggling to shove the memory—the hunger—back into the dark where it belonged. Sam was _right there_ , Sam’s hands were on his shoulders, and Sam wasn’t helping, damn it. Sam was … was …

Dean choked out a strangled, “Oh, God,” and dashed for the bathroom, slamming the door behind him and locking it. Sweating and shaking, he leaned against the sink and fought for control of his own mind. He could hear Sam trying to soothe the frightened woman out in their room. Could hear him offering her money for a cab and ushering her out with a haste that bordered on panic.

Then Sam was banging on the bathroom door and calling, “Dean, are you okay?”

Dean took a moment to swallow and then rasped, “Gimme a few minutes.”

“We may not _have_ a few minutes,” Sam’s voice came back urgently. “I tried to smooth things over with that woman, but she was really freaked out. I think she’s going to call the police.”

Great, just what Dean needed: sexual assault added to his list of felonies. Henricksen would be thrilled.

“Dean?” Sam called again. “Come on, man, I’ve got everything packed. You can—you can get a hold of yourself in the car. I’ll drive.”

Dean forced himself to his feet and unlocked the door, almost spilling Sam into the bathroom as he did so. “I’m so screwed,” he croaked, and then Sam’s arm was around his waist _(flicker-flare, flicker-flare)_ , steadying Dean as he led him over to sit on one of the beds.

Dean watched his brother through half-lidded eyes and a haze of slowly dissipating need, looking for … Hell, he didn’t know what he was looking for. What the demon had taunted him with, maybe. But Sam didn’t seem any different. Seemed nervous and concerned for Dean’s health as he shoved a duffel into Dean’s arms and asked, “Can you manage to carry that out to the car?”

“I’m horny, Sam, not an invalid.”

Sam’s lips quirked up in a faint smile. “Well, you still have your sense of humor, anyway.” Then, pulling him to his feet despite his protestations that he could stand on his own thanks, Sam herded him out to the car.

He didn’t ask about the woman, or what had happened: that damned sulfur reek had been so strong in the room that a rank amateur wouldn’t have needed to ask, and Sam was anything but. He wasn’t saying anything, actually, driving with his hands tightly clenched on the wheel and his attention focused on the dimly lit road in front of them. His brow was furrowed, though, which meant that he was thinking about something: probably the new deadline, only five days distant.

Dean leaned his forehead against the window, letting his eyes fall shut, and said softly, “I’ll start tomorrow.”


	3. Chapter 3

When Dean came out of the bathroom the following night, Sam almost swallowed his tongue. His brother had taken the same deliberate care with his appearance as he had when he was playing bait for the succubus: his hair spiked and the faded, worn t-shirt clinging to his torso. He was adjusting the collar on his leather coat and exuding sex in every direction while the siren song, unrestrained, rolled across his shining skin. Light flashed in his eyes, turning them almost phosphorescent.

Sam shifted in his seat, thankful that he’d had the foresight to throw on the longest, loosest shirt he owned. Dean didn’t need to see what kind of effect he was having on his little brother, not when he already looked so damned lost. Anger and determination warred openly on Dean’s face, but Sam knew his brother well enough to read the fear and self-disgust that lay beneath. He wanted to go over to Dean and take that look off his face. A quick blowjob would …

 _Get a grip, Sam!_ he told himself sternly, dropping his eyes. It didn’t help much—he could still feel the siren song vibrating along his skin—but at least he didn’t have to _see_ how incredibly fuckable his brother looked right now.

“I’ll call when I’m done,” Dean said tonelessly.

“I’m coming.” The words were out of Sam’s mouth before he’d considered them, but now that he’d said them, he wasn’t going to take them back.

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re not doing this by yourself, Dean.” He stood up, grabbing his coat off the other chair and shouldering into it. Deliberately putting himself in the path of temptation while the full flush of the siren song was on his brother was probably one of his more moronic ideas, but he couldn’t just send Dean off like … like some kind of pimp.

“What, you gonna hold my dick for me?” Dean asked nastily.

Sam flinched. _Oh Christ, Dean, don’t say shit like that._ Clearing his throat, he managed, “No, I—I’ll wait in the car. In case … in case anything goes wrong.”

“It’s just sex, Sam. I think I know what goes where.” There was the jangle of metal as Dean got his keys out and started toward the door.

Sam lifted his head at the sound, and then darted across the room to grab his brother’s arm before he could leave. Dean’s muscles were humming with tension underneath his hand, but he didn’t shake Sam off, which said more about how freaked out he was than his expression ever would.

“At least—the bar. Let me come with you to the bar,” Sam pleaded.

“Why, you wanna see your handiwork?” Sam suspected that his brother had meant for that to be biting, but Dean’s voice shook as he spoke, and he ended up just sounding frightened.

“No,” Sam answered, and this close to the siren song—to that incessant _wanttakefucknow_ —he was unable to keep his thumb from rubbing gently across Dean’s bicep. “I just want—” _You_ , but he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t mind fuck Dean like that right now. With an effort, he switched tracks and finished, “I’m here, Dean. This isn’t all on you.”

Dean finally turned his head to look at Sam, and Sam’s dick gave a painful twinge as the full weight of those too-green eyes fell on him. God, Dean was beautiful. While his brother studied him, Sam ran through Latin conjugations in his head to keep from throwing Dean against the wall and taking what he wanted—hell, what he _needed_.

Then Dean said, “I don’t want you to see me like this,” and it was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over Sam’s head.

He jerked his hand back, feeling exposed. Dean didn’t want Sam looking at him because he _knew_ —Sam had given himself away somehow, and now Dean was going to kick his ass, he was going to tell Sam how perverted and sick he was to want something like that.

But Dean’s eyes weren’t scornful or disgusted. Dean was … hell, he looked _ashamed_. Meeting his brother’s gaze, Sam realized with a shock that, as naked and dirty as he’d felt a moment ago, Dean was feeling a hundred times worse. And after a moment of confusion, he realized why.

Although Dean had always been a shamelessly carnal person, and comfortable with his body, there was a difference between being handsome and looking like a walking billboard for sex. And he had always been a little touchy about being seen as a vapid ‘pretty boy’ by other people: a little worried that they’d see his face and not bother looking any deeper. Sam was fairly certain that Dean wasn’t aware of it himself, but that fear was there nonetheless, and right now it was probably tying his stomach in knots.

If Sam had been any kind of brother at all, he would have said something light and mocking to lighten Dean’s mood. He would have given Dean a quick, tight hug to let him know that he didn’t care that the succubus had effectively turned him into nothing more than a hard body with a pretty face and a cock: he was still Sam’s brother, and a hunter, and Sam was so fucking proud of him that he sometimes choked on it.

But the only words that Sam could come up with right now were the forbidden ‘I love you’, and with the erection he was currently sporting, there was no way in hell he would be able to hug his brother without Dean finding out about his little secret.

If he’d been any kind of brother …

 _Yeah, well, if I’d been any kind of brother, I never would have sold Dean out to a demon without his permission in the first place._

“Call me,” Sam said hoarsely.

Dean’s eyes shuttered. Then, without another word or any sign of hesitation, he gave Sam a tight nod and walked out the door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Plagued by a nauseating mix of concern and guilt, Sam threw up twice before Dean finally called three hours later. Their conversation was short and to the point, and when he hung up with his brother, Sam threw the phone across the room. It shattered against the far wall, but Sam was already sprinting out the door and didn’t see the plastic shards raining down to litter the carpet.

A short conversation, but memorable, and it looped through Sam’s head as he jacked one of the cars sitting in the parking lot.

‘Thank God. Are you—’

‘I fucked up.’ Dean was hyperventilating, his voice cracked and wet.

‘Dean? What—’

‘I couldn’t—I was kissing her, and then we started to—and everything just—I lost it, man, and I—Jesus, Sammy, she’s dead.’

‘Where are you?’

‘483 Woodburn. Second floor. Helen Roizen. She—she’s got a cat. She’s got a cat and a—a fucking stuffed bunny collection, and—’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay? Okay, Dean?’

‘I—yeah, Sammy. Okay.’ And then he’d hung up before Sam could say anything else and Sam had … had _lost_ it for a few seconds and the next thing he knew he was sliding behind the wheel of an old Honda that smelled like stale Cheese Whiz.

He broke at least five different traffic laws on his way to his brother, and if any cops had tried to pull him over, Sam thought that he might have actually shot them for trying to keep him away from Dean. He couldn’t seem to think past getting to Dean before he did something incredibly stupid. He should have kept Dean on the phone, he should never have made the fucking deal in the first place, he should have …

And then he was pulling up in front of the apartment building and leaping out of the car and sprinting up the steps and shouldering the front door open. There were two apartments on the second floor landing: black stickers on peeling green wood labeled them 2C and 2D. Glancing back and forth between the doors, Sam started to panic. Dean hadn’t given an apartment number—hell, maybe he’d been too busy with Helen What’s-Her-Name to notice which one they were going into. Sam was so goddamned _close_ , and— _and you can just knock on both doors and the one Dean answers is the one he’s in, you fucking moron!_

Sam immediately raised his hand to knock on the door to apartment 2C and then caught sight of the welcome mat he was standing on. Tacky, blue thing with paw prints and swooping, pink lettering: _Cats leave Paw Prints on your Heart_. A cat: Dean said she had a cat.

Sam tried the door and the knob turned easily underneath his hand. “Dean?” he called, edging inside and shutting the door behind him.

Dean didn’t answer, but he had to be here because his coat was tossed over the arm of a worn leather couch. There were two beers sitting on the coffee table, and a trail of discarded clothing leading down the hallway, and the thick scent of sex _(and something else, something horribly familiar in their line of work: that sewer scent of fresh death)_ in the air.

Sam followed the trail of clothes into the bedroom and found his brother sitting on the floor in the corner. Dean was still naked, and shivering, his eyes wide and locked on the bed. On the woman—or what was left of her—sprawled across the twisted sheets. That rustling death smell was stronger in here, but the woman looked like she’d been dead for months, her body left out in the hot sun somewhere. Her corpse was desiccated, flesh sunken in and skin only a thin layer of parchment over bone. Her back was arched, as though she’d been in the middle of an orgasm when she died, and of course she had been—that was the way incubi fed, wasn’t it?

Sam tore his eyes from the corpse and dove across to his brother. “Dean,” he said urgently, crouching next to him and looping an arm around his shoulders. “Hey, man. Look at me.”

Dean’s head turned slowly, his red-rimmed eyes refocusing with obvious difficulty. “Sammy?” he whispered.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Dean’s hand came up and clutched at Sam’s shoulder. “Sammy, I fucked up, I—”

“Shh. It’s okay, man. It’s okay.”

Dean laughed wildly, his eyes returning to the bed and its grisly occupant. “You’ve got a really fucking weird definition of ‘okay’,” he rasped.

Sam shifted to block Dean’s line of sight and snapped his fingers in his brother’s face to make him focus again. “Dean. Dean! We need to get out of here: can you get up?”

Dean didn’t answer, his eyes drifting to the window seat, which was heaped high with stuffed animals—mostly floppy-eared rabbits.

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam said louder, shaking his brother a little.

“Yeah,” Dean muttered, blinking and dropping his head to stare down at his own chest. “Yeah.”

With Sam’s help, he climbed to his feet and then Sam half-dragged him out into the hall so that Dean could get his clothes back on. Dean moved slowly, like he’d just been severely beaten, and Sam wasn’t sure if that was because of his emotional state or if it was a side effect of the feeding.

 _She knew_ , he thought as he watched Dean fumble clumsily at his fly. _She_ knew _he wouldn’t be able to stop himself._ He suspected that, for the first time, he was getting a taste of what Dean meant when he said that demons always got the better end of the deal. He’d thought it was enough that the succubus was getting nourishment and strength from Dean, but why would she have settled for that when she could do this to him as well? When she could make Dean into one of the things he’d spent his life hunting: into a killer?

 _If he has to keep doing this, he’ll go insane,_ Sam thought, and the knowledge drenched him in a cold panic.

When Dean was finally dressed again, Sam glanced around the apartment and considered doing a quick clean up. But his brother was already dragging himself toward the door, and the police never classified incubus kills as homicides anyway. So Sam kept his mouth shut and helped Dean down the stairs and into the back parking lot where the Impala was waiting. Then he eased Dean down into the passenger seat before jogging around to the driver’s side and getting in.

They were halfway back to the motel—just to pick up their stuff: no way were they sticking around here any longer than they had to—before he finally asked, “Are you okay?”

The eyes Dean turned on him were empty. His voice, when he spoke, was hollow. “Fantastic.”

“I mean physically. How are you feeling?”

Dean’s eyes rolled away again and he rested his head against the window. “Tired.”

“You’re not hurt, though?” Sam pressed.

“No.” And he wouldn’t say anything else for the rest of the night.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean had managed to put himself back together a little by the time Sam finally stopped driving in the morning. He’d slept while Sam drove them across two state lines, and when they pulled up in front of Bunky’s Hide-a-way (Hourly Rates Available), he raised one eyebrow. “You couldn’t find somewhere a little skeevier?” he asked.

Sam forced himself to smile. “Heart-shaped hot tubs in every room,” he said, nudging Dean gently with one elbow.

Dean stretched like an overgrown house cat. “You looking to get lucky?” he muttered, and then climbed out of the car without waiting for an answer.

Sam stared after him for a moment— _pull it together, asshole_ —before hurrying to get their bags and join his brother at the check-in counter, where Dean was registering them as Harry and Reginold Gupta. The pot-bellied clerk was leering at Dean, who had mostly, but not completely, clamped down on the siren song. Luckily, Dean was busy flipping through the cards in his wallet and didn’t notice: Sam wasn’t sure how his brother would respond to something like that right now.

He stepped up behind Dean, closer than he normally would have, and glared at the clerk. _Mine,_ he thought. _He’s mine and you can’t have him._ Dean elbowed him in the gut and muttered, “Little room here, Reggie?” but the clerk lost his smile and was careful not to look at Dean for the rest of their transaction, so Sam counted it a win.

“Dibs on the hot tub,” Dean announced when they let themselves into the room, his voice bright with false cheer.

Sam just nodded as Dean headed into the bathroom. They were going to have to talk soon—about Helen, and how the hell they were going to keep it from happening again—but he understood that Dean wanted to get clean first. To wash what he could of last night off his skin. He stared at the closed door for a few minutes before moving over to one of the skuzzy, queen-sized beds. Sat down gingerly on the edge to wait.

It was almost two full hours before Dean finally wandered out, wearing boxers and an old t-shirt and with his hair toweled dry. He headed for the unoccupied bed without so much as a glance at Sam and started to pull the sheets back, obviously hoping to avoid a conversation.

 _Sorry, Dean. Not gonna happen this time._ Sam considered easing them into it, and then decided that Dean would probably ignore anything but direct questions. “What happened?” he asked bluntly.

Dean’s hands tightened on the sheets and his shoulders tensed beneath the t-shirt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Tough. What happened?”

Dean shook his head slightly. “You were there, Sam. You saw what happened.”

“Do you remember how—”

“No, okay?” Dean paced around the bed and sat down on the far side so that he wouldn’t have to look at Sam. Bending forward over his knees, he ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I remember getting back to her place, and then we started making out on the couch, and I—” He let out a shuddering exhale and then said, “I was hungry. I wanted—hell, I _needed_ it. Needed her. And it felt so fucking good, it—Jesus, I could feel her dying and I couldn’t stop.” His breath huffed out in a sharp laugh. “I didn’t _want_ to stop. Bitch was right. Best goddamned sex of my life.”

“Dean—”

Dean twisted so that he could look at Sam, his mouth set in a mocking curve. “You gonna make it all better, Sammy? Got some words of wisdom to offer?”

“You didn’t do it on purpose, Dean. It wasn’t your fault.”

Snorting, Dean turned his back on Sam again. “Yeah? Tell that to Helen. Tell it to whoever I decide to fuck next month, and the month after that, and—”

“No!” Sam snapped. “You’re not—you’re not doing it again.”

Dean didn’t say anything.

“You hear me, Dean? I’d rather be dead than—”

“So would I, Sam!” The shout exploded out of Dean as he shoved up to his feet and whirled on Sam in one fluid movement. “I was all signed up and ready to go and then some asshole went and revoked my fucking ticket!”

Sam’s chest tightened painfully and he shot back, “None of this would have happened if you’d just let me stay dead in the first place!”

Dean was vaulting over his bed and knocking Sam onto the floor before Sam even registered the movement. He started to push himself back up and then Dean’s hands were fisting his shirt. Dean’s knee was pressing into his lower stomach.

“You think I don’t know that?” Dean snarled. “You think I don’t know that this is all my fault?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Shut the fuck up, Sam. For once in your goddamned life, just—just don’t.” He tossed Sam back against the floor and got to his feet. Sam lay where his brother had left him, staring at the ceiling while Dean paced and cursed brokenly and kicked one of the chairs over. His mind whirled, searching for some way out of this mess, for a solution, and the only one he could come up with was killing himself. Was putting the score even again.

But he suspected that if he ever actually did that, Dean would survive him by a couple of minutes at most. Things looked bleak right now, but Dean … Dean didn’t deserve to die. He _couldn’t_ die.

 _You don’t think he wouldn’t prefer to be dead?_ a cold voice asked. _You don’t think that’d be better than forcing him to kill?_

 _No_ , he thought back stubbornly. There had to be another answer, after all. The demon was dead, and somehow they were both still alive, and okay, yeah, the situation was beyond fucked up, but there had to be a way to fix things.

Slowly, Sam edged up onto his elbows. “Do you think—now that you know what it feels like, do you think you could—”

“Control it?” Dean finished for him. He came to an abrupt stop and glanced over at Sam. Whatever he read in Sam’s expression seemed to drain him of his bitter rage, leaving him hunched and somehow diminished.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, dropping into the chair he hadn’t kicked across the room. “It felt—fuck, Sam, I’m hard right now just thinking about what it felt like.” Eyes fastened sightlessly on the far wall, he tapped one hand on the table. “I’m gonna have to try to control it, aren’t I? And don’t even think about offing yourself, either.” Dean’s eyes were suddenly sharp on him. “You try pulling that Cobain shit and I _will_ drag your ass back here.”

 _He would too_ , Sam thought numbly. He was struck by the ghastly image of Dean repeatedly bargaining him back to life, selling off another night of service per month to the succubus each time until there was nothing else left of him. Nothing but heat and want and hunger.

Nothing but another demon.

“You hear me, Sam?” Dean prodded.

“Yeah,” Sam said miserably, and then slowly climbed to his feet. “Look, maybe you can, I don’t know, practice or something.”

“And who’s gonna stop me if things get out of hand?” Dean demanded. “You?” He raised one eyebrow. “You want me to find some girl who’s got an exhibitionism kink and bring her back to the motel so I can do her while you keep an eye on me?”

Oh, bad idea. _Really_ bad idea. With Dean naked and hard and the siren song flooding the room, no way was Sam going to be able to control himself. And Dean … Dean would be so lost in the hunger that he wouldn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Until he came back to himself with two corpses in the room instead of one.

But Sam couldn’t help but note that Dean hadn’t sounded too put off by the idea. He’d sounded more … assessing … and maybe a little hopeful. Sam squelched the sick surge of hope in his own chest at his brother’s tone.

 _He’s into it because it looks like a solution, dumbass, not because he wants to have a threesome with his baby brother._

“Erm. Maybe,” Sam stammered. “But you can work up to that. Not everything needs to be about sex.”

“Incubus, Sam. That’s pretty much completely about sex.”

“I meant that you could limit yourself to kissing for a while. Stay in the bar where you won’t, um, get too carried away.”

Dean frowned as he thought that through, and then nodded slowly. “That might actually work. Knew I kept you around for a reason.” His mouth turned up into a weak smile, and Sam knew that his brother wasn’t even close to forgiving himself for last night, but it was a start. It was a chance to find their way out of the mess Sam had made. Even if this didn’t work, Sam figured that he’d just gained them some time to find a permanent solution.

 _Whatever it takes, Dean_ , he promised silently.

Whatever it takes.


	4. Chapter 4

The girl’s name was Wendy, and she was a heavy weight in Dean’s arms. Too heavy. Slowly pulling himself out of the hungry, violet haze, he released her lips and tilted his head back so that he could get a look at her face. There were dark circles under her closed eyes, and her skin was pale and dry. She was still alive, but this was too fucking close to the other night—to Helen Roizen—for Dean to do anything other than swear and drop her.

Which turned out to be a really bad idea because he was almost immediately surrounded by burly, angry-looking men. His head was still spinning, but he caught the general gist of their rapid conversation. Words like ‘rapist’ and ‘drugged’ tended to stand out a bit. He looked for Sam, but his brother was still down at the other end of the bar, although he’d started trying to fight his way through the gathering crowd toward Dean.

An olive-skinned man lifted Wendy while another—dirty blond hair, red chambray work shirt—clapped his beefy hands on Dean’s shoulders. “I’ll keep him here, Frank,” Chambray said. “You go call the cops.”

Shit. Dean struggled to find his feet, but that weak, lightheaded feeling was coming over him again, just like it had before. All the energy that he had just taken from Wendy was draining out of him and into the succubus, wherever that bitch was. Dean gripped the edge of the bar to keep from sliding off the stool.

“Let him go.” That was Sam’s voice. Sam riding to his rescue like the proverbial knight in shining armor. Except that the knight should be slaying the monster, not saving it. The image of Helen Roizen’s face—so flushed and eager one minute, and flaking and mummified the next—hung before Dean’s eyes in accusation.

Maybe Sam shouldn’t be bothering. If they locked him up, the only people Dean would be able to hurt were the cons on his cellblock. Which was … what? Somehow better? They were still people. Still lives that Dean would be trading for his own. For Sam’s.

“This guy just drugged that girl over there,” Chambray was explaining. “He ain’t going nowhere till the cops get here.”

“Dean?”

Dean could read the question in his brother’s voice: Sam wanted to know if he was on his own here, or if Dean was capable of offering an assist. He managed to shake his head. Way he was feeling right now, he’d be lucky to walk out of here on his own two feet. The exhaustion wouldn’t last, but it also wasn’t going to dissipate before the police arrived.

Chambray’s hands tightened suddenly on Dean’s shoulders as he exclaimed, “Jesus, man, what’re you—”

“You’ve got about ten seconds to let him go before I start putting holes in you.”

At Sam’s calm words, Chambray dropped Dean as though he’d suddenly burst into flames. Dean twisted his head around to see the man backing away with raised hands.

Sam, gun out and eyes tracking the movement of all the people around him, shifted to put his back to Dean. “Can you stand?” he asked softly out of the corner of his mouth.

“Do I have a choice?” Dean grunted, and then stared incredulously at the hand Sam offered him. Sam wasn’t a fucking amateur: he should know better than to try firing a gun, even a small pistol like the one he was currently waving around, with one hand. Damn thing’d recoil and he’d miss his target by a mile.

Dean slapped his brother’s hand away and hauled himself to his feet, leaning on the bar for support. “Both hands on the fucking gun,” he ground out, pitching his voice low so that no one else would hear the rebuke.

“If you need help, then—”

“I can walk fine,” Dean snapped. “Just wasn’t up to dancing with these assholes.”

Sam didn’t argue further, cupping the gun with both hands again and sweeping his gaze across the room for any signs of attack. “You ready?”

Dean ignored the wave of faintness that made his head spin and answered, “Yeah.”

“I want a clear path to the door!” Sam shouted, and the people who had been frozen between them and the exit suddenly discovered a fervent desire to be elsewhere. Sam ignored the frightened sobbing and strangled screams—Henricksen was gonna have a field day with this—and murmured, “I’ll cover you,” over his shoulder.

Dean obediently edged around his brother, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. He could feel the entire room watching him: hating him. Not that he deserved anything else. He was a monster, after all: a goddamned incubus with control problems. He’d killed one woman already, and he was going to kill more because he could already tell that Sam’s plan wasn’t going to work. The hunger had been worse this time—stronger, greedier—and he hadn’t done anything except kiss her.

He spat out a startled curse as his knees buckled, but Sam caught him and hauled him back onto his feet before he could go anywhere. Dean clung to his brother, waiting for one of the people surrounding them to realize that Sam couldn’t aim for shit right now—waiting for an attack—and no one moved. Apparently Sam had cowed them enough that they didn’t want to risk it.

Dean let Sam hook one arm around his shoulders for support as they made their way to the door—picking a fight with his brother in front of all of those people wasn’t a great idea—but as soon as they were outside, he shoved him away. “I can walk on my ow—”

“Bullshit,” Sam interrupted, tucking the gun into his pants before moving in again. “Now stop being stubborn and let me help you to the car before the cops get here.”

Dean scowled, but he didn’t fight when Sam slipped an arm back around his shoulders. “You’re a fucking moron, you know that?” he mumbled as his brother dragged him to the Impala. “What if someone had jumped you, huh? What the fuck were you gonna do with only one hand?”

“I wasn’t going to let you fall, Dean.”

“Asshole.”

Sam ignored him and all but shoved him into the passenger seat. He slammed the door while Dean was still fighting with his seatbelt and then jogged around to the driver’s side.

Dean figured Sam was angry—he’d just fucked up on his first run out, after all—but Sam only sounded concerned when he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Dean …”

“Well, what the hell else do you want me to say? No, all right? No, I’m not okay. I’m scared, is that what you want to hear? I’m fucking terrified that I’m gonna have to kill someone else—that I won’t be able to contr—” He snapped his mouth shut as a way out of this whole mess suddenly occurred to him. Felt his whole body go still.

“What?” Sam said, glancing over.

“Nothing,” Dean lied. If Sam knew—if he even suspected—that Dean was thinking about this, then he’d pitch a fit, and Dean didn’t think he could deal with his brother’s tears. Not right now.

“It’s not ‘nothing’, Dean. I can tell when you—”

“I was thinking about Helen, okay? Now can you please give it a fucking rest?” And that shut Sam up just like Dean had known it would. Left him free to stare out the window and wonder if it could really be that simple: if he’d just stumbled across an escape hatch.

If Dean was dead, then the succubus couldn’t very well expect him to keep feeding for her, could she? And there wasn’t anything in their little arrangement that said he couldn’t kill himself. Sure, suicide was a mortal sin and all that, but Dean was already going to Hell anyway. He’d been signed up for that trip for a few years now, really.

Best part of the whole thing was that Sam would be safe. Sure, the kid would be upset for a while, but he’d get over it. He’d move on, and he could actually have a normal life now that the demon was gone and his freak brother wasn’t holding him back.

As they passed a streetlight, Dean caught a glimpse of his brother’s reflection in the window and his chest constricted painfully. He had almost a full month left before he had to make another payment. He didn’t need to take care of things just yet. One more month with Sam: a month to finish saying goodbye _(carefully, can’t let him find out)_ , and then … then …

Then.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean knew that things weren’t going well before Sam threw the computer across the room, but that was the moment he gave up on the last dregs of hope he’d been clinging to. Sam wasn’t going to find a way to fix this. He couldn’t because there was nothing to find: no way out but the escape hatch.

Dean wished that he could convince his brother to give it up. Then they could spend the time that Sam was wasting on fruitless research goofing off instead, or just driving around with the windows down and the stereo up. For all the quality time that Dean was getting with his brother lately, he might as well just clock out now and be done with it.

“If you wanted a new laptop, all you had to do was ask,” he said mildly from his seat on the bed, as Sam stood in the middle of the room with his chest heaving, staring at the dent in the wall and the pieces of plastic and metal littering the floor beneath it.

Sam looked over at him with wide eyes and, for a few seconds, Dean was actually a little afraid of his brother. He’d never seen Sam this desperate: this poised on the edge of violence. He’d come close when he killed Jake, but that dude had only gotten what was coming to him. Sam’s face now said that he didn’t give a shit who or what got in his way: he was ready to kill everything and everyone to get his hands on what he wanted.

And just … no. Sam wasn’t going to become that. Not for Dean.

“Sammy?” he said carefully.

Sam seemed to pull himself back a little as he blinked and took a deep breath. He glanced at the remains of the laptop and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“No problem,” Dean responded, keeping his voice light. “I mean, I’ll miss my porn stash, but starting over from scratch can be fun too.”

Sam didn’t roll his eyes or crack a smile at the joke. Didn’t purse his lips in that annoyed, prissy way he had. He only looked at Dean with eyes that were slowly hardening and said, “I don’t think that we’re going to find the answer this way.”

 _Duh_ , Dean thought, but he wasn’t feeling too suicidal right this second, so he didn’t actually say it out loud. Leaning back on his elbows, he gently asked, “What other way is there, man? I mean, you’ve called all our contacts, and between you and Bobby I think you’ve gone through just about every resource on demons that exists.”

Bobby had been the only one that they’d trusted with the truth about the situation. Not that they’d had much of a choice: the man had already known about Dean’s original deal, and he wasn’t stupid. The fact that Dean was walking around past his expiration date would have told him instantly that something was up. Sure, they could have tried coming up with a plausible lie, but somehow Bobby always _knew_.

“Not _every_ resource.” Sam’s voice was rough. He sounded like he’d spent the last hour either crying or screaming. Dean, who’d been in the room with his brother the entire time and hadn’t heard any yelling from Sam’s direction, was pretty sure which one he’d been wasting his time on.

As Dean frowned, trying to figure out what Sam was getting at, his brother added, “There’s one sure way to find out. An incubus—a real one—would know how to—”

“No,” Dean cut in as soon as he realized what Sam wanted to do. He meant it, too: used the ‘this is my final word on the matter, now fall in line and _march_ ’ tone of voice that he’d picked up from Dad. Of course, that particular voice had never worked on Sam.

“It’ll know, Dean. It _has_ to know how to control feedings.”

Dean’s jaw twitched. Just once—just _once_ —he’d like to have Sam actually listen to him. “I mean it, Sam. You’re not summoning a goddamned demon.”

“Why not?” Sam demanded, his mouth thinning dangerously. The air was so thick with his frustration and anger that Dean thought he might choke on it. “You and Dad did. I’m kinda feeling left out here.”

“Yeah, well, one deal per Winchester,” Dean shot back. “You already had yours: that’s why we’re in this mess in the first place.”

“No, Dean, we’re in this mess because you couldn’t let me go!”

There really wasn’t anything he could say to that. They’d been over this before, after all, and Sam was right: this was entirely Dean’s fault. Dean dropped his eyes and stared at his fingers, picking distractedly at one of the rips in his jeans. He heard Sam sigh before walking over to sit on the other bed with a creak of worn springs.

“Look, I’m not gonna make a deal with it. I promise. I’m just going to ask it some questions, okay?”

“Demons never give anything away for free,” Dean pointed out. He couldn’t seem to make himself look at his brother. His stomach was churning at the thought of all the pain that his greed for more time together was causing Sam. He should have made a clean swap like Dad. Sam would already be done with his grieving and moving on with his life by now.

“It’s just information,” Sam said. “And if it wants … something … in return, then I can—”

“No,” Dean blurted, and snapped his head up. The idea of Sam letting one of those filthy bastards _use_ him like that was just … It wasn’t going to happen, was all. “If it wants something, I’ll do it.”

Sam’s brow furrowed. “But you aren’t even—”

“Yeah, I am. Sometimes.” God, this so wasn’t the way he’d wanted Sam to find this out—not that he’d _ever_ wanted Sam to find out, really; it was none of his goddamned business—but there it was. One of the last secrets Dean had, laid out in the open for his brother to gape at.

“But—but you—all those women—” Sam seemed to be having trouble processing. If Dean hadn’t known that Sam batted for the home team himself every once in a while, he’d be feeling a little self-conscious right now.

“What can I say?” Dean asked wryly. “I’m an equal opportunity slut.”

“Don’t.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Bit late for that, man.”

“I mean don’t—don’t call yourself that. You aren’t, okay? You’re not—not like that.”

Which was a fucking weird thing to say because Sam usually spent half his time rubbing Dean’s nose in just how much of a slut he really was. Except that right now Sam was giving him this earnest, heated stare, and Dean could hear the crossroad demon’s taunting words in his head: _‘Do you know that sometimes, when Jessica used to suck him, he’d close his eyes and imagine it was you?’_.

Memory threatened again, and even though he didn’t know what he’d hidden there, Dean knew that it was bad. Knew that if he let himself see that sun-dappled lawn, let himself remember whatever had happened there, he’d lose his tenuous grasp on his own sanity.

 _She was lying_ , he told himself. _She was just saying that to fuck with me._ But his chest constricted, and he had to drop his eyes.

“Whatever,” he mumbled. “Point is, if there’s any ‘doing’ that has to be done, it’s gonna be me and not you.”

“Dean—”

“This isn’t open for debate, Sam,” Dean said as harshly as he could while staring down at his own stomach.

He expected Sam to fight him on it, but instead his brother just whispered, “Okay,” and then asked, “Can we—when do you want to—”

“Let’s just get it over with.” The sooner Sam realized there was no way out of this mess, the sooner he’d stop searching for something that didn’t exist. And the more time Dean would have to make his goodbyes.

“Tomorrow night,” Dean added. He caught Sam’s nod out of the corner of his vision.

“Yeah, okay.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sam could tell that his brother was more than a little uncomfortable with the whole ‘summon an incubus’ plan. Dean was sweating, and he kept jumping at the creaks coming from the dilapidated house around them. They’d broken into the deserted building for the ritual: it was isolated enough that if things got a little noisy, the cops wouldn’t show up and complicate matters.

Sam had been worried about rotten boards and collapsed ceilings, but so far the only sign of serious decay had been the green growth of mold on one of the bedroom walls. He hadn’t wanted to set up there anyway: the room he’d finally chosen was much better—there were no windows and only one door, so it would be easier to contain the incubus if something went wrong. Which it totally wouldn’t because Sam had spent over a week researching the summoning ritual before broaching the subject to Dean last night.

He did a final check just to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything. Myrrh incense? Check. White chalk circle bordered by the Writ of Lilu? Check. Ring of thirteen thick, red candles burning around the outside of said chalk circle? Check. _Malleus Maleficarum_? Check. Incubus-infected brother? Check.

Clearing his throat, Sam asked, “You ready?”

“No,” Dean griped, but he squared his shoulders and relaxed his hold on the siren song. Sam’s grip on the _Malleus Maleficarum_ tightened as the song settled over his brother like a glittering curtain of shadows. Dean’s eyes were practically glowing as he glowered at Sam, and flickers of red and gold—the reflections of thirteen tiny flames—danced in his dark hair.

“You gonna do it or what?” Dean muttered, and Sam realized that he’d been staring. He jerked his gaze back to the ancient book he was holding and hoped that the flickering candlelight hid his blush. Luckily, Dean didn’t seem to have noticed anything because he immediately continued, “I still don’t think this is gonna work. I’m not really feeling all that into things, if you know what I mean.”

Dean was referring, of course, to the final—and most important—ingredient they needed to summon one of Lilu’s offspring. With most demons, the catalyst was blood, or death or pain. With incubi and succubi, however, all a potential summoner needed was a good helping of lust.

This morning, while explaining the ritual to his brother, Sam had told Dean that the siren song would be an acceptable substitute. He’d been lying his ass off, of course, but no way was he going to admit the real reason he wasn’t worried about that last ingredient. _‘Hey, Dean, that lust thing is seriously not gonna be a problem because I’ve been wanting to get into your pants ever since I knew what my dick was for’_ probably wouldn’t have gone over well.

Sam began to read the incantation from the book, shifting his weight as he did so and trying to adjust himself without being too obvious. For the first time, he wasn’t trying to fight the attraction, and he was so hard it was almost painful. There was no way that an incubus could resist answering the summons with this much desire clogging the room.

Sure enough, when he got to, “ _Vene, et libationem cupiditatis mei accipe_ ,” the air in the middle of the circle darkened and then seemed to split open, forming a black doorway. A naked man, tall and blond and far too handsome to be real, immediately stepped out of the darkness and the doorway closed behind him.

The demon’s indigo eyes found Sam and, despite the protective barrier between them, Sam’s arousal spiked alarmingly. He dropped the _Malleus Maleficarum_ and pressed the heel of his palm hard against his erection to stop himself from coming: he wasn’t sure whether the incubus could feed through the protective circle or not.

“Sam? Sam!” Dean had sprinted around the circle to grab Sam’s shoulder, and that was Not Helping because now he could smell his brother over the incense. Leather and gunpowder and a lower, musky scent that was Dean’s sweat.

He wanted to turn and hook one leg behind Dean’s. Wanted to drop him to the floor and hold him there while he ripped off all those stupid layers his brother always insisted on wearing. Then he could map out that freckled chest with his mouth, he could mark that soft skin as his own. Sam’s hand came up and gripped Dean’s shirt. He started to pull Dean closer, and …

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Winchesters. This _is_ a surprise.”

Sam pulled away from Dean, panting heavily, and refocused on the incubus, which was watching him with an amused half-smile on his face. As Sam met his eyes, the incubus took a deep breath and said, “Oh, _there_ it is. But what are we thinking of, little hunter, hmm? What fantasy are you fueling that desire with? Come on and share with the class.”

“Don’t listen to it, Sam: it’s just trying to confuse you.” Dean stepped forward, putting himself between Sam and the incubus. It was easier to breathe now that Sam wasn’t meeting the demon’s gaze, even if he did have to bite his tongue to keep from plastering himself against his brother’s broad back. Maybe he should have thought this through a little more.

The incubus didn’t seem at all displeased by the interruption. In fact, his smile widened as he raked his eyes up and down Dean’s body. “Dean Winchester. My, how the mighty have fallen. My sister’s been bragging about that deal of yours all month—said you were made for this. I didn’t think any human could be quite so … tempting …” He licked his lips and then continued, “ … but I’ve been wrong before. Don’t suppose you’d want to—”

“I’ll give you about ten seconds to stop putting the whammy on my brother, and then I’m kicking your ass back down to Hell.”

“Oh, but _I’m_ not doing anything to Sammy—am I, Sam?” And Sam could tell from the smirk on the incubus’ face that it had figured out exactly what—and more importantly _whom_ —Sam was yearning for.

Fuck.

“I’m fine, Dean,” he said swiftly. “Really.”

“Bullshit,” Dean snarled without looking at him. “We’re sending it back. Where’s that book …” He noticed the _Malleus Maleficarum_ laying next to him and started to reach for it. Sam hastily kicked the book into the corner. Dean's brow furrowed in annoyance. “Dude, what’re you—”

“Just say the word, Sammy, and this can be a private discussion,” the incubus offered. “Of course, if you’d rather we let your brother in on—”

“No,” Sam blurted. “Private is good.”

Dean’s expression went from annoyed to alarmed in about half a second as he realized what was happening, but before he could say anything a strong, violet wind swept out of the circle and shoved him across the floor. He skidded out the door, shouting and fighting against the wind the entire time, and then he was in the hallway and the door slammed shut behind him. There was a second of silence and then Dean was hammering on the worn wood, shouting Sam’s name and trying to force his way back in. The incubus’ eyes flashed and the sound cut off.

“If you hurt him—” Sam started, and the incubus raised his hands, unlined palms outward.

“Dean’s fine. I just thought it would be a tad difficult to have a conversation with that racket. Did some creative soundproofing.” He tilted his head, amusement lining his face, and then asked, “So, why ever did the famous Samuel Winchester want to talk to me? Or did you have more in mind than a little conversation?”

He ran his hands across his body and it shimmered: shrinking, becoming bulkier. Hair shortening, darkening. Lips filling out, and … and _Dean_ was standing there, naked and hard. Dean was eyeing him with a hungry, inviting look.

 _Not Dean, not Dean_ , Sam reminded himself.

“Maybe you thought you’d try to fuck it out of your system?” the incubus prodded. “I’m sure we could work something out …”

“No.”

“I’d make it good, Sam. You’d never know the difference.”

Yeah, he would. He’d know because Dean would never do this. Never _want_ this. It took an effort, but Sam managed to tear his eyes from the incubus wearing his brother’s shape. Staring at the far wall, he muttered, “I want to know how to control the feeding.”

“Do you?” the incubus asked. It sounded almost gleeful.

“Yes,” Sam answered, and then continued without any hesitation, “Tell me and you can have me. You can—whatever you want, short of killing me.” His gaze shifted to see how the incubus was taking his offer and he was relieved to see that the demon wasn’t mimicking his brother anymore.

The incubus tilted his head and curled his lips up in a sensuous smile. “Now, that’s tempting, ” he drawled. “But I’m going to have to pass.”

“What do you want, then?” Sam snapped, desperation thick in his mouth.

“Nothing.”

“There must be something—please, I—I’ll do anything, I—”

“Shhh,” the incubus soothed. “I didn’t say I’d turn you away empty handed. You can have your answer.”

Sam blinked, confused. “But—but demons never do anything—”

“—for nothing? No, you’re right.” The incubus chuckled: a sound that seemed to trail fingertips down Sam’s spine. “But I’m feeling generous tonight. Besides, I have a feeling that this will be much more fun than any of the games you and I could play on our own.” His smile widened as he parroted the words Sam had spoken to his brother weeks ago: “Not _everything’s_ about sex.”

Sam’s heart beat wildly in his chest. He had a really bad feeling about this; anything that a demon found ‘fun’ couldn’t be good. But he needed the knowledge the thing was offering. Needed to save Dean. And if the solution was … was … well, they didn’t _have_ to act on it. They could keep looking.

Ignoring the sinking sensation in his stomach that was telling him that this, whatever it was, was Dean’s _only_ chance, Sam said, “So tell me already.”

“We can’t control it on our own,” the incubus answered lazily. “Our sisters were gifted with some rudimentary control at least, but the male of the species has always been more … impulsive … hasn’t he?”

“So there’s—there’s nothing.” Sam’s heart sank. No wonder the incubus hadn’t needed payment to answer him.

“Now, I didn’t say that, did I? There _are_ some individuals—powerful psychics—who have the strength to protect themselves. They can control how much we take.”

Sam’s mind was a whirl of names and faces, all of them useless. He and Dean hadn’t come across a whole lot of psychics in their travels. Missouri was pretty much it, actually, and aside from the fact that Sam couldn’t really see her agreeing to screw his brother a couple of times a month, he didn’t think that she counted as ‘powerful’. She had, after all, missed the lingering presence of the poltergeist and Mary Winchester in their childhood home. If Sam hadn’t sensed that something was still wrong, then Jenny and her children would be dead right now.

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, he said. “There has to be something else—some other way. We don’t know any psychics powerful enough to—”

“Don’t you?” the incubus asked, raising one eyebrow and leering meaningfully.

It took Sam a moment to work through what the demon was getting at and then his breath huffed out, as though he’d been punched in the gut. Nausea rolled through his stomach at the thought of what this thing was suggesting he do to Dean, but he couldn’t hide the fact that the idea was also turning him on. Christ, he was sick.

“Finally, you can have what you’ve always wanted,” the incubus goaded. “You can strip him down and bend him over and it won’t be for you—oh, no, not for your own twisted desires—it will be for _him_. To _save_ him.”

Sam wanted to tell the incubus to shut up—wanted to banish him—and was too lost in his own desire to move. The incubus’ words felt like hands on his body: like Dean’s hands. As Sam let his eyes slip shut, he could _see_ his brother, naked and hard and flushed.

“You think he’ll welcome you with open arms?” the incubus whispered. “You think he’ll roll over and spread his legs and beg for you?”

Sam shuddered, watching the imaginary Dean in his head do just that. Feeling phantom lips and hands caressing his body.

“Go ahead, Sam. Go ahead and fuck him. He’ll let you, you know. He never could deny you anything.”

But the image in his head had changed. Dean was still naked—still hard and needy underneath him—but his face was blank. His eyes vacant.

The incubus’ laugh wrapped moist heat around Sam’s cock, but that vision of Dean hollowed out and broken had thrown a bucket of cold water over his arousal. Sam forced his eyes open again to find the incubus pressed up against the edge of the circle. When he caught Sam looking, the demon winked at him.

“You didn’t actually think he wanted you _back_ , did you?” he mocked. “You can’t save him, you can only decide how he damns himself. You think he’d rather be a murderer? Or do you think he’ll get down on his knees like a good little whore and—”

“Shut up,” Sam choked, and then tore himself away from the incubus and hurried to retrieve the _Malleus Maleficarum_ from the corner.

“Hey, I’m just telling it how it is.” The incubus watched unconcernedly for a moment as Sam thumbed through the book’s pages, and then commented, “I’m betting it takes you all of one week to cave. You want him so badly, don’t you, Sam? And really, Dean’s not too picky, is he? That slut will take it any way he can get it. Once you’ve broken him in, he’ll be—”

“ _In nomine Patris omnipotentis et Jesu Christi Filii eius et Spiritus Sancti, te exorcizo_.” Sam shouted, giving up on relocating the right passage.

The standard words must have been close enough because that black doorway snapped open again and pulled the incubus back through it. Then the door faded into a thick, indigo cloud that misted down and spread out across the floorboards. Sam stared at the circle while the cloud evaporated, the demon’s taunts lodged cold and heavy in his stomach.

A sudden pounding on the door brought his head up and around. With the incubus no longer holding it shut, the door flew open, and Dean stumbled back into the room. He caught himself before he’d gone more than a few steps and raised the open flask that he was clutching in his left hand.

“Where is it?” he demanded.

Wearily, Sam shrugged. “I banished it.”

Dean dropped his flash on the floor and was in front of Sam in a moment. His hands were warm and solid on Sam’s arms as he checked for any sign of injury: were real, unlike the phantom touches Sam had felt only a few minutes before. His chest constricted and for a moment he couldn’t remember how to breathe.

“You okay?” Dean asked. “Did it hurt you? Did it—”

“I’m fine.” Looked like he could breathe after all. Wonderful.

Dean’s face twisted into a scowl and his hold on Sam’s arms tightened painfully. “You asshole!” he shouted, shaking him. “What the fuck were you thinking? If you _ever_ do that again, I swear to God, I—”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Dean must have heard something in the dull way that Sam said those words, because he backed off and lowered his gaze. “Yeah, well,” he grumbled. “You better not.” He hesitated a moment longer, maybe trying to come up with a way to ask why Sam had felt it necessary to have him tossed out in the hall, and then crouched by the circle to put out the candles.

“Dean, there’s a—there’s a solution.”

“What— _shit_!” In his surprise, Dean had knocked over one of the candles, and now he scrambled after it, swearing and trying to put it out before it set the house on fire. Sam made himself move, but by the time he’d dropped down next to his brother, Dean had everything under control again. He didn’t look at Sam, all of his attention apparently focused on getting the hot wax off of his hand.

“Are you all right?” Sam asked.

Dean’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. He rubbed at the reddened skin on the back of his hand for a few moments and then said, “So, what is it? I have to bathe in virgin’s blood under a full moon or something?”

“No, nothing like that. You can’t—can’t actually control the feeding yourself.”

“I’m all breathless with anticipation here, Sammy,” Dean said dryly when Sam paused.

“A psychic—a powerful psychic—can control it for you.”

Dean’s face hardened and Sam imagined that the change in his brother’s mood dropped the temperature in the room about twenty degrees. “Well, that’s a huge fucking help,” Dean spat, moving away to get the rest of the candles.

“Dean—”

“ _What?_ Unless you’ve got Jennifer Love Hewitt stuffed in your back pocket, I’m still screwed.” He savagely brought the heel of one palm down on one of the few remaining flames.

“We’ll find someone.”

“Oh, really? And how’re we gonna do that? Take out an ad in the classifieds? ‘Part time incubus seeks willing buffet. Only psychics need apply’?” He was crouched over the last candle now, and a trick of the light made it seem like all of the shadows in the room had gathered in his eyes. “Do you realize how rare real psychics—of _any_ power—are?”

“It may—may take a while, but we can—”

Dean snuffed the last candle, plunging the room into darkness. “I don’t have ‘a while’, Sam. I have about two weeks. So excuse me if I’m a little less than thrilled right now.” Sam more sensed than saw his brother stand and head for the door.

Climbing to his own feet, Sam stumbled into his brother and grabbed at the sleeve of Dean’s shirt. “Hey. It’s a chance, okay? And we’ll find someone. We will.”

Dean was unresponsive and Sam wished that he could see his brother’s face. Wished he could try and read what Dean was feeling in his eyes.

“Dean?” he prodded.

“Whatever,” came the cold grunt. “Can we just get out of here already? This place smells like crap.” He yanked his arm free without waiting for Sam’s reply and then Sam heard him clomping down the hallway toward the front of the house.

Left alone in the pitch-black room, Sam considered gathering up the candles and wiping the circle off the floor and then decided not to bother. He pulled a small flashlight out of his back pocket and used it to pick his way after his brother, the _Malleus Maleficarum_ held tightly in his other hand. He was going to save Dean. He wasn’t going to hurt him. Wasn’t going to break him.

 _‘I’m betting it takes you all of one week to cave.’_

Sam shuddered and tried to force the incubus’ voice out of his head as he kept repeating _I won’t I won’t I won’t_. Maybe, if he thought it enough, it would become true.


	6. Chapter 6

For some reason, Dean kept _looking_ at Sam. When Sam caught him at it, he asked what was up because Dean’s expression was … was … okay, it was as unreadable as ever, but something just felt _wrong_ about the whole thing. Dean, of course, refused to answer. Either clammed up tighter than Fort Knox or snarled at Sam until they were both shouting at the top of their lungs.

Those fights inevitably ended with Sam getting fed up and storming off because it was either leave or punch Dean in his arrogant, beautiful face. When he returned, Dean always looked so damned guilty and grateful that he had come back at all _(and when the hell was he going to get that Sam. Wasn’t. Leaving?)_ that he never had the heart to return to his initial question.

After a few days of that aggravating dance, Sam decided that he was going to have to figure out what was going on without his brother’s help. Three days of peering at Dean as he flirted with the clerk at the gas station, or licked his way through a stack of Oreos, or sang along to ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’ at the top of his lungs, and Sam finally realized what was bothering him about his brother's behavior.

For the past two months, Dean had been wound tighter than a box spring. He’d been self-loathing and angry by turns as he twisted himself up inside looking for a way out of the deal Sam had made. Now, Dean was relaxed and open. Was smiling when he wasn’t staring at Sam like he was trying to memorize his face.

In other words, he was lying his ass off about something.

On Saturday, only five days from the succubus’ deadline, Sam found an article in a reputable online journal stating that psychics operated on a higher energy level than normal people. He pulled Dean over to the computer and made him read it, hoping to prod some kind of truthful response from his brother.

“Huh,” Dean said when he finished the article. He pulled the bag of Cheetos he’d been snacking on into his lap and leaned back in the chair.

“That’s it?” Sam demanded. “Dean, this is good news. This means that you might be able to get a life’s worth of energy out of a psychic without killing them. You’d only have to feed once a month, and depending on how powerful of a psychic we find, they may not even miss what you take.”

“Fantastic.” Dean emptied the rest of the bag into his mouth. “Hey,” he mumbled around a mouthful of something disgusting and bright orange. “You wanna get some steak for dinner tonight? I need some real food.”

Sam resisted the urge to grab Dean and shake him until an honest shred of emotion fell free. He _knew_ his brother. Knew that there was no way that Dean was all right with what he was going to have to do in a few days.

But he didn’t want to provoke another fight, so instead he only pointed out, “I don’t think they serve steak at Burger King.”

Dean balled the empty bag up and then tossed it into the trashcan by the front door. “So we’ll splurge. Come on, man: we totally deserve it. I do, anyway, cause I’m awesome.” And then he grinned broadly. “Besides, Arthur Fonzarelli is buying.”

“The _Fonz_ , Dean?”

Dean shrugged. “Hey, you really want to turn down a nice, juicy rib eye because you’re not a Happy Days fan? Cause I can always go on my own, if you’re gonna be that way.”

Sam rolled his eyes, which was probably the reaction Dean was shooting for. “I’m just surprised that someone at …”

“American Express,” Dean filled in.

“… was stupid enough to accept that name on an application.”

“I’ve got a MasterCard for Ferris Bueller. Wanna see?”

Sam knew when he was beaten and let it go.

He had to admit that it was nice to have some quality food for a change. Usually, Dean’s idea of a good meal was Denny’s instead of Taco Bell, but the restaurant he dragged Sam to this time was actually pretty classy. It looked like somewhere Sam might have taken Jessica a million years ago.

At first Sam was a little nervous. He’d never been completely comfortable in upscale places himself _(God, that date with Sarah had been a_ disaster _)_ , but sometimes Dean seemed to have no social graces whatsoever. Surprisingly, Dean was behaving himself for once: was making an effort to act like a normal human being and not inhaling his food or chewing with his mouth open or hitting on their petite waitress. He was actually paying attention to Sam: trying to get him to laugh. And, as usual these days, he had the siren song firmly tucked away and under control, so Sam could relax his guard a little in return.

Over a couple of steaks, Dean told him about the time he’d come back to the motel to find Dad passed out on one of the beds with a half-empty bottle of tequila in his hand and a girl’s number written across his forehead in pink lipstick. From there he moved on to the time Dad got hit by a pixie’s curse and walked around with bright blue hair for a week, and then to time the Impala had broken down in the middle of nowhere and Dean was rescued by Christina Aguilera’s back up dancers— _‘seriously, man, those girls could_ move _’_.

By the time they’d worked their way through dessert, Sam was more relaxed—was _happier_ —than he’d been in years. He and Dean never stopped and enjoyed each other’s company like this: they were usually too busy trying to stay alive. Well, they’d just have to make time for it in the future.

When they got back to the motel, Sam collapsed on the bed and cupped his hands protectively over his stomach. “I’m never eating again,” he declared, staring up at the ceiling. That last piece of cake he’d gotten to go had been a bit much.

“Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?” Dean deadpanned, dropping down on his own bed. They lay there in quiet companionship long enough that Sam was starting to drift off and then Dean asked, “So, you enjoy yourself tonight, Sammy?”

“It was nice,” Sam agreed. “We should do it again.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean said, and then he was climbing off of his bed and heading for the bathroom. “I’m gonna take a shower. You need the bathroom first?”

“I think I’m just gonna pass out here, thanks. You can wake me up sometime next year.”

“Okay. Good—goodnight, Sammy.”

“Mmm,” Sam murmured absently as he watched the back of his eyelids. He heard the bathroom door close, and then the shower started up, and he was drifting down into himself.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He knew immediately that he was dreaming. The Impala was parked on a long, white beach, nose pointed out toward the ocean, and Dean would never let his baby get this close to the saltwater. Sam was sitting on the car’s hood, looking out over the water at the setting sun. It was nice. Peaceful and quiet and … and someone was sitting down next to him.

He glanced over at his companion. Beautiful woman. Long, dark hair that shone sleekly in the dying sun. Sam had only seen her once before, but the circumstances had been rather unforgettable. Scrambling off the car, he groped for the holy water that he wasn’t packing here.

The succubus rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I’m not here to hurt you.”

Sam forced himself to stand his ground. Running wouldn’t really help against a demon anyway. “Is this real, or am I dreaming?”

“Little from Column A, little from Column B. This was the easiest way for me to reach you, and we _do_ need to talk.” She inclined her head toward him, her glowing indigo eyes serious.

“About what?”

The succubus raised one slender arm and pointed past Sam toward the ocean. “About that.”

Sam glanced over his shoulder and instead of cresting waves he found himself faced with tile and porcelain. Their motel bathroom hung suspended above the white sand, and Dean was standing inside of it. He was looking at himself in the mirror as he fastened the buttons on what Sam recognized as his brother’s best shirt. Dean’s favorite hunting knife was resting next to him on the sink.

“Dean?” Sam said, turning around to fully face the vision of his brother. “What—” His question cut off as the succubus twined around him, one finger pressed to his lips.

“Shh,” she whispered in his ear. “Just watch.”

Dread pooling in his stomach, Sam obeyed. He stood silently as Dean ran his fingers through his short hair before rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. He watched his brother pick up the knife and go to sit on the floor with his back to the wall. Stared as Dean positioned the knife between his knees with the double-edged blade pointing up.

Sam realized what was coming and wanted to look away. Wanted to shout out. Wanted to sprint forward so that he could wrest the weapon away. But horror, or perhaps the succubus’ arms around his chest, rooted him to the spot. Any cry of denial he would have uttered turned to dust in his throat. He couldn’t even close his eyes as Dean set his wrists against the side of the knife, just above the handle, and dropped his head back to look at the ceiling.

“Be happy, Sam,” Dean breathed, and then bit down on his lower lip and jerked his hands up. His face twisted in pain, and there was blood dripping down from his lip—there was blood _everywhere_.

“Might want to let your big brother know that this counts as a breach of contract, Sammy-boy,” the succubus hissed, her tongue darting out to trace across the shell of Sam’s ear.

In front of Sam, Dean was bleeding out all over the floor. He hadn’t cut his wrists the ‘right’ way, but he’d managed to make the gashes deep enough to do the trick: Sam could see the delicate bones of Dean’s wrists through the slices. And Dean was just … just _sitting_ there, calm and collected with his hands in his lap and his head resting against the wall.

“When?” Sam choked out. He didn’t waste time asking whether this was a false vision: it was too fitting an explanation for Dean’s behavior this past week.

“Now,” the succubus answered in a low growl. The hand she was resting on his chest grew talons and she dug them into his skin.

Gasping in pain, Sam sat up. He was in the motel room again: awake and distraught. A quick glance around the darkened room was enough to tell him that Dean wasn’t there, that Dean was still in the bathroom. That Dean was …

No.

Sam scrambled out of the bed and sprinted toward the bathroom door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean stared at himself in the mirror, slowly buttoning his shirt. He hadn’t been positive that he’d be able to go through with this, but here he was in his best shirt and the one pair of jeans he owned that weren’t covered in bloodstains, and he felt pretty damned decided. He and Sam had been at each other’s throats all week—mostly because Dean had been petrified that Sam would figure out what he was planning—but today had been smooth sailing. Dinner had been awesome, and Sam had full out giggled a few times.

Dean figured that he probably wasn’t going to get a better chance than this to check out.

He snuck a glance at the knife as he finished with the last button. He would rather have used a gun—quicker that way, and relatively painless as long as he aimed right—but he didn’t want to wake Sam up. Let the kid have once more peaceful night’s sleep before he had to start in on that mourning crap again.

Dean studied himself in the mirror, frowning slightly. Why the hell had he bothered to get dressed up? He was just going to ruin the clothes in a few minutes anyway. _I’m a vain son of a bitch, that’s why_ , he silently told his reflection as he ran a hand through his hair. _Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse for the funeral pyre._

Carefully rolling up his sleeves, Dean wondered if maybe he should have left a note. But Sam would know why he was doing this, and after all these years on the job he sure as hell knew what to do with the body. The only other thing Dean might have put in the damned thing was how proud he was of his little brother, but Sam already knew that as well, so there wasn’t much of a point, was there? Anything he wrote would only come out sounding all Lifetime Movie of the Week, anyway.

Dean was reaching for his knife when the bathroom door flew open, the crappy lock snapping off and shooting into the tub as two hundred pounds of pissed off Winchester barreled into it. Sam stumbled to a stop and raised his head. Glared back and forth between Dean and the knife on the edge of the sink with his nostrils flaring.

Dean backed up a step at the expression on his brother’s face.

“What. The. Fuck?” Sam yelled.

“I can explai—” Dean’s words were cut off when Sam crashed into him, driving him back against the wall between the toilet and the shower.

“You stupid son of a bitch! What the hell were you thinking?” Sam’s hands fisted in Dean’s shirt. While Dean gaped at him, trying to get with the program, Sam pulled him forward in order to shove him into the wall again. Something cracked and Dean was eighty percent sure that it was plaster and not his back.

Sam was pulling him forward for another slam when Dean finally recovered enough to knock his brother’s hands away. “Get off me!”

“You selfish bastard!” Sam yelled back, immediately latching onto Dean’s shirt again and resisting Dean’s subsequent attempts to push him away. “Did you even think about me, Dean? Huh? Did you even _consider_ how I’d feel if you—”

“I’m _doing_ this for you, you asshole!” Dean shouted.

Sam blinked at him, taken aback, and his grip loosened. “How is this—”

“I can’t do it, man. I won’t—won’t kill anyone else. I _can’t_. And if I don’t, you’ll die. But if I—if I’m not around, then she can’t—”

“It _counts_ , Dean,” Sam cut in, his voice harsh. “This counts as breaking the deal.”

Dean wanted to protest that there was no way Sam could know that for sure. He _wanted_ to, but he couldn’t. The firmness of his brother’s tone told him that somehow Sam _did_ know for sure. The escape hatch Dean had been pinning his hopes on was nothing more than another trap door.

He sagged in Sam’s grip, all of his anger abandoning him beneath the weight of his despair. There were months of killing spread out before him—possibly even _years_ of leaving used up husks in his wake before Sam managed to find a willing psychic strong enough to control the feeding.

And hey, Sam might _never_ find one: how’s that for a thought?

Dean’s chest was hitching and there was a burning itch behind his eyes. Any moment now he was going to start sobbing like a five-year-old girl, and he couldn’t do that in front of Sam. Shoving blindly at his brother again, he choked out, “Please, just—won’t do anything, just—leave me alone—I can’t—”

Then Sam’s lips were pressed against his, Sam’s tongue was in his mouth, and one of Sam’s hard thighs was wedged up between his legs. Sam was … was _kissing_ him, he was rocking against him, and this was wrong on so many fucking levels that Dean didn’t even know where to begin.

 _Sammy_ , he reminded himself. _Little brother._ But that insatiable hunger was waking inside of him. Sam was just flesh to it, and Sam’s— _oh, fuck_ —arousal was as acceptable as any other. The demon inside of Dean didn’t care that they were related: didn’t care that this was totally sick and twisted.

Sam released his lips and Dean realized that he wasn’t fighting—forcing Sam away had never even occurred to him. He hadn’t even remained passive in the face of this insanity: he was clinging to Sam, one hand curled around his brother’s bicep and the other dragging Sam’s thigh more firmly against his own growing erection.

“What the fuck?” he said breathlessly, and he wasn’t sure whether he was asking that question of Sam or of himself.

“Dean, I’m a—I’m a psychic—you don’t have to—I can—” Sam was kissing him in between words, biting and licking at his mouth and jaw. “You don’t have to—to hurt anyone—”

“Brothers,” Dean moaned, scrambling after that tiny, screaming voice in his head that was telling him this was _wrong_ , this was _bad_ , and rapidly moving into FUBAR territory.

“Dean, I—I want you—but if you—if you want me to stop—I can— _fuck_ —just tell me not to—and I’ll—we can try to find s-something—oh God, you taste so _good_ —”

“ _Sam_ ,” Dean gasped, and then all rational thought dissolved into violet need as he ground down against his brother’s thigh.

Sam was thrusting his own erection against Dean’s hip, was ripping Dean’s shirt open so that he could suck bruises into his collarbone. The hunger snaked up and latched onto Sam, and Dean’s jaw went slack at the sudden influx of energy. He stared sightlessly over his brother’s shoulder, trapped by sensation. Just like last time, the mists were rolling in on him, taking away control, and then Sam breathed his name and memory _(sun, heat, scent of metal)_ blindsided him.

 _It’s the summer after Sam’s second year at Stanford, and Dean’s managed to get away from Dad for a few days to check up on his little brother. He finds Sam goofing off in the middle of a small park with a bunch of other guys. They’re playing a game of what looks like it started as touch football but that has turned into more of a free for all. Sam’s not wearing a shirt, and there are smudges of dirt and grass stains on miles of tanned skin, and his smile is so wide and bright that Dean can barely stand to look at it._

 _He sits in the Impala and watches the muscles in his brother’s back work and he’s suddenly, blindingly, hard. He doesn’t let himself think about it (although Sam would, Sam would sit down and analyze what was happening until his perfectly good hard on went to waste). Dean is a Man of the Moment, and he just takes a quick glance around to make sure no one has front row seats to Dean Does Palo Alto and then unzips and reaches his hand inside to take care of the problem._

 _Funny thing is that he can’t stop watching Sam while he does it. He feels dirty and sick, staring at his little brother and jacking off, but that doesn’t stop it from feeling really fucking good at the same time._

 _When Sam tackles one of his buddies, Dean comes hard, and it’s to the mental image of Sam using all that strength and power to shove him up against a wall and just_ take _him. In that moment, when his breath is coming fast and shallow and he’s slightly dizzy from the heat and his own arousal, he lets his eyes linger on his brother, who has control of the football now and is sprinting for the two trees that mark off the end zone._

 _Then he slowly turns his face away and uses some napkins from the glove compartment to wipe himself off. He is careful not to look out the window as he drives away, and deliberately spends the return trip not thinking about anything in particular. Within a week, he doesn’t even remember what happened. But he doesn’t go to see Sam again until Dad goes missing and he can’t stay away any longer._

Dean came back to himself with a rush. His body was still working against Sam’s, and Sam was thrusting back in return. Dean’s throat was clogged with desire, his eyes drowning in violet, and the hunger was sucking greedily on his little brother.

Stunned by what he’d just remembered, he managed to pull out of the violet fog enough to start panicking. Sam wasn’t going to be able to stop him; he wasn’t strong enough, and Dean was going to drain him dry.

 _No. Oh, God, please no …_

Suddenly, Sam was forcing the hunger away—was thrusting it back inside of Dean where it belonged—and Dean gasped. A wave of dizziness washed over him at the abruptness of the severance, and then they were both coming. Dean’s fingers dug into his brother’s arm as he rode out his orgasm, and he felt a distant and unimportant sting at his throat where Sam bit down a little too hard while his brain was otherwise occupied.

His cock gave one last, feeble twitch, and he dropped his head forward onto Sam’s shoulder. That feeling of weakness was worse than ever before—possibly because Sam had cut the hunger off before it was done with him—and Dean would have fallen if his brother hadn’t slipped an arm around his waist to hold him up. Sweat drenched his skin, making his torn shirt stick to his back, and there was an unpleasant dampness against the crotch of his jeans.

“S-Sam?” Dean wasn’t quite sure what was going on: didn’t know how he was supposed to feel after he’d just gotten off with—hell, _on_ —his own brother. His _little_ brother, whom he had all but raised. _Wasn’t the first time_ , he thought wildly, and then trembled as he fought to shove that memory back in the dark where it belonged.

“Gimme a minute,” Sam whispered, his breath tickling the hair at the nape of Dean’s neck. “I—that was—Jesus, that was incredible.”

Sam gently kissed Dean’s cheek and Dean stopped trying to make the memory of that hot summer afternoon go away again. It was kind of pointless locking the stable door after the horses had gotten out and left big fucking hoof prints all over him. He blinked numbly at his brother’s chest while Sam kissed him again, nuzzling at his neck and trying to get him to tilt his head up.

Dean was fine. He wasn’t going to panic. He just needed to take this one thing at a time, that was all.

Item one: Sam was still alive, and Dean was reasonably sure that the succubus had just gotten her monthly payment. Well, that was good, right?

Item two: Dean was about a heartbeat away from passing out and couldn’t seem to get his muscles to work properly. Not as good as item one, but he’d recovered from this before, and he was most likely going to be fine this time as well. He was just going to have to get used to the languid exhaustion that came over him after every feeding.

Item three: Sam was kissing him—on the cheek and throat right now, but there had definitely been some lip on lip action going on. And hey, let’s not forget the humping and the orgasms and that day in Palo Alto where he’d jerked off to the sight of his little brother’s back and okay, yeah, panicking now.

Sam finally stopped kissing Dean to move back a little and ask, “Hey, are you okay? Dean?”

Sam was holding Dean up by the shoulders so that he could look him in the face, but Dean couldn’t look at his brother right now. Stomach churning, he cast his eyes to the side. What the hell did Sam expect him to say: _'Yeah, I’m great, let’s go again'_? They were brothers, and this—this shouldn’t have happened. Aside from that one aberration _(yes, that’s what it was: it was just one time, it didn’t mean anything)_ Dean had never thought of Sam like this, and now … now he wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to think of him any other way because Sam was right, that had been fucking _incredible_ , and God, he was a sick bastard, wasn’t he?

“Dean?” Sam repeated. He sounded nervous, and Dean knew that if he shifted his gaze just a few inches to the right, he would find that his brother’s eyes were wide, and anxious, and over-bright. He wanted to comfort Sam, he really did, but how _could_ he when he couldn’t even figure out how to reassure himself?

Finally, he muttered, “I need to clean up.”

At the edge of his vision, Dean saw Sam’s face shatter, and his chest constricted violently. But Sam didn’t press him about it, thank God, and he only hesitated for a few seconds before helping Dean sit down on the toilet. Dean swayed a little once he was down, but his strength was already starting to come back and he managed not to fall over. Of course, now his head was at roughly the same level as Sam’s … _Oh, for fuck’s sake, look somewhere else, Winchester!_

“Do you need any help?” Sam asked.

“No.”

“Okay, then.” He stood there awkwardly for a few moments and then turned around and slunk toward the bedroom. He paused next to the knife, which had gotten knocked off the sink during their scuffle and was now lying on the floor, and then squared his shoulders and left it there. Closed the door behind him as best he could, with a good chunk of the locking mechanism sitting three feet away in the bathtub.

Dean shut his eyes, dropped his head into his hands, and tried not to think about Sam’s lips. About those freakishly large hands of his brother’s wrapping around his cock and …

He let out a small, humorless laugh. Looked like he and Sam had finally managed to stumble across the catch to this ‘too-good-to-be-true’ deal. Wherever she was, the succubus had to be laughing her ass off.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam didn’t think it was possible to be too upset and guilt-stricken to throw up, but apparently he was wrong. Nausea had been tap dancing through his stomach ever since he had realized what he’d done to Dean, and that rich dinner—the steak and dill potatoes and German chocolate cake that was supposed to have been Dean’s last meal—still hadn’t come up. He’d given up leaning over the trashcan a half hour ago, and now he was sitting on the edge of his bed. His hands dangled uselessly between his knees while he stared at the bathroom door and waited.

Waited for Dean to finish his second shower of the night or for him to end it.

If he still wanted to kill himself, then Sam wasn’t going to stop him. If Dean was dead, then no one would be able to hurt him anymore. _Sam_ wouldn’t be able to hurt him anymore. And although uncertainty was pretty much Sam’s byword these days, he knew that Dean wasn’t going to Hell. Sam had revoked his brother’s pass for that particular ride, and he was sure that, suicide or not, Dean wouldn’t be getting another one. Sure, Sam would die within a few seconds of his brother, and _he_ was going straight down _(and wouldn’t the demons be thrilled with him for depriving them of a matched set?)_ , but he didn’t really deserve any better. Not anymore.

He dropped his head forward into his hands. How the hell could he have forced himself on Dean? What in the world had possessed him to violate his brother like that? Yeah, he’d been half out of his mind trying to come up with a way to convince Dean that there were other options than suicide, but surely he could have found a better way to make his point. Preferably something that didn’t involve shoving his tongue down Dean’s throat.

 _He kissed back_ , he thought for the hundredth time, twisting his hands in his hair. _He didn’t say no._

 _Of course he didn’t_ , came the ready answer. _He’s infected with incubus hunger. He can’t say no: he isn’t capable of it._

Which meant, didn’t it, that Sam had basically just raped his brother?

Jesus Christ.

Sam wanted to cry and couldn’t: his eyes were already overly dry and puffy from the tears he’d shed into the trashcan while he was waiting to throw up. He’d reached the point where he was almost hoping that Dean would end it. That Dean would put a stop to this before Sam had to look him in the face again.

Great. Now he was a coward as well as a rapist. If Dad were here, he would have kicked Sam’s ass six ways from Sunday. Hell, if Dad were here, he would have shot him dead in a heartbeat.

The bathroom door jerked open clumsily—that was the only way it was going to open until it had been replaced—and Sam scrambled to his feet. His heart, which seemed to have gotten stuck in his esophagus, was beating so quickly it was tripping over itself. His mind was screaming at him to run—to run _now_ before he really got a good look at his brother.

But Dean deserved better than that, so Sam forced himself to stay put. Made himself watch as Dean edged out into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Sam’s mouth dropped open before he could stop it, but luckily Dean wasn’t looking at him. Dean’s eyes were focused about three feet to Sam’s left.

“I, uh, need some clean clothes,” Dean said.

Of course he did. What did Sam think, that he was coming out here for seconds? Bursting into motion, he darted over to the foot of the other bed to grab Dean’s duffel. Then he turned around and faltered, trying to figure out what to do now. In order to give Dean the bag, he would have to go over to his brother, but he didn’t want to alarm him—didn’t want to fuck things up more than he already had. His stomach turned over wretchedly as he hesitated.

“I’m not gonna be able to get dressed with you holding my clothes for ransom.” The words were joking, but Dean’s voice was tight with an anxiety that bordered on fear.

 _Oh, Jesus, just give him the bag._ Stumbling forward, Sam held the duffle out. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Here.”

Dean caught one edge of the bag as Sam swung it toward him and then backed into the bathroom. A moment later, the door was forced shut again.

Sam stared at the splintered wood with his hands limp at his side. He considered fleeing again, but unless he was prepared to leave for good _(I can’t: it’s selfish, but I can’t give him up again)_ then he was going to have to face Dean sooner or later. Putting the confrontation off would just make it worse when it finally came. Besides, Sam wasn’t going anywhere until he knew that Dean was going to be all right.

When Dean came out of the bathroom again, he was wearing a baggy t-shirt and a loose pair of sweats. Sam was sitting in one of the chairs at the table, which left his brother a clear path to either the bed or the door.

Carrying his duffle with both hands in front of him, Dean took two steps into the room and stopped. “How do you feel?”

Sam, who had been ready for either a flow of recriminations and abuse, or a dull silence, flinched at the soft question. “I, uh … I don’t … um …”

“Physically,” Dean clarified. “You feel weak? Tired?”

Oh, Dean wanted to know if feeding the incubus hunger had hurt him at all. Now that Sam thought about it, he’d hardly noticed a difference in his energy level. Maybe he’d been a little more lethargic than normal after his orgasm, but that hadn’t really been a normal orgasm, had it? It had been so much more intense, and wonderful, and … _And you_ raped _him, you sick bastard!_

Sam swallowed and then said, meekly, “I’m okay.”

“Good,” Dean grunted. He let go of the duffle with one hand and started for his bed.

Sam watched Dean drop his bag on the floor and start pulling back his covers and couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Dean, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that—I didn’t mean to—God, I’m so sorry, I—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dean muttered. He climbed into the bed and rolled over on his side so that Sam couldn’t see his face.

“We can’t just ignore it!” Sam insisted, and Jesus, had he always been this masochistic?

“I’m tired, Sam.” The whispered words derailed Sam completely. Left him even more off-balance and guilty than he had been before. Dean’s entire body was stiff: the position he was lying in was artificial and strained.

Sam’s throat worked for a moment before he could manage to force out, “Do you want me to go?”

Dean didn’t answer him immediately, and Sam was getting ready to ask again when he finally said, “Maybe you should. I can’t—I need some time to—to think about this.”

“Okay,” Sam whispered hoarsely. His heartbeat seemed to pound in his vision as he gathered his stuff together and packed it into his duffle. Dean quietly lay there and faced the wall while Sam packed, but Sam could tell from the tension in his brother’s back that he was acutely aware of what was going on behind him. Finally, Sam stood next to the door with his bag slung over his shoulder.

“You can … if you need to, you can call me, okay? Anything you—whenever you want.”

Dean didn’t say anything—didn’t even offer a goodbye as Sam walked out the door—but Sam figured that his brother’s silence was answer enough.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, Dean fingered the bite mark on the side of neck. Sam had done that. Sam’s teeth—Sam’s mouth—all over his skin. Dean let his hand slip lower, to the bruises his brother had left across his collarbone. He’d had full out, wild sex for hours and not gotten this marked up. Sam had had him pressed up against the bathroom wall for, what, four minutes?

Dean realized that he’d gotten hard staring at the marks his brother had left on him and turned away from the mirror with an abrupt motion. A snort of derision huffed out of him as he paced back into the bedroom. You’d think that after almost a full week of seeing those bruises—that _bite_ —every time he passed a reflective surface, he’d have gotten used to them by now.

It was supposed to be easier to think with Sam gone, damn it. Dean was supposed to be getting his head back on straight—was supposed to be figuring out what had happened—and he was no closer to managing any of it than he had been when Sam had walked out the door. He was supposed to be convincing himself that this was wrong and could in no way be allowed to happen again—that he didn’t want this: didn’t want Sam _(his little brother whom he was supposed to be_ protecting _, for fuck’s sake)_ like this—and was failing miserably on those counts as well.

Dean had spent the first day or so turning over that unveiled memory of watching Sam in California. He’d been sure that there was a rational explanation for what had happened there. But in the end there was no getting around the fact that it had been Sam he was thinking about when he wrapped his hand around his cock. It had been Sam’s name that had stuttered past his lips as he came.

By the afternoon of the second day, things had only gotten worse. Once he had been forced to acknowledge the truth of what had happened on that blinding summer day, a hundred other memories had suddenly cropped up:

Patching up the gash on Sam’s upper thigh where the kid had been thrown into the corner of a table by a poltergeist and enjoying the warmth of his brother’s skin a little too much;

Watching appreciatively from the corner of his eyes as an exhausted Sam shucked off his shirt and jeans and flopped onto the bed in nothing more than a worn pair of boxers;

Listening to his brother jerk off in the middle of the night after his date with Sarah when he thought that Dean was asleep;

Wanting to lean across a chipped diner table and lick the smear of jam off the corner of Sam’s mouth;

Catching some stranger’s eyes on his brother and needing to touch, to claim, to make sure that they knew that Sam was his and he wasn’t sharing.

He felt like his brain had turned into hostile territory over night and was ruthlessly trying to damn him with evidence of his perversion.

Dean laughed hollowly. ‘Perversion’, right. Because he believed that. Because he actually felt bad about wanting to fuck his own brother. As he ran a hand through his hair distractedly, Dean grimaced.

God, he _should_ feel bad. He shouldn’t want this—should be disgusted by the very thought of it—but he couldn’t manage to summon up the correct emotions. It was really moronic to feel guilty about not feeling guilty, but then again Dean had never claimed to be a smart guy.

Never claimed to be all that moral, either, although this was certainly a little further out there than anything else he’d ever done. Helen’s face flickered in his mind and Dean corrected himself with a sharp sting of remorse. Wanting to fuck his brother was more amoral than anything else that he’d ever done _willingly_.

If he’d known for sure that Sam wanted him back, then Dean would have thrown ethics and convention to the proverbial winds in about a second. But he wasn’t sure at all, which led him yet again to the circles his mind had been tracing for the last four days.

Dean came out of his thoughts to the realization that he had wandered into the bathroom again. Cursing, he resolutely strode back out and yanked the broken door as closed as it would go.

Okay, a little distraction seemed in order here. Maybe he should head down to the café where he’d been eating all his meals: there was this little brunette waitress who had definite potential. He was halfway to the door before he remembered, with a lurch of his stomach, that if he tried anything beyond a little light flirting, he’d probably end up killing her.

Damn it! Damn Sam all to hell for making that deal in the first place. Damn him for kissing Dean and fucking everything up even worse.

 _That’s right,_ he _kissed_ you _: doesn’t that mean he’s as interested in this as you are?_

And just like that, Dean was back on the hamster wheel again.

Yeah, Sam had kissed him. But Dean had been a wreck at the time, and had absolutely no control over the siren song. Sam was a red-blooded, young guy, who had been worked up himself, and anger wasn’t all that far from passion, was it? Especially with a demonic shove in the right direction.

And siren song notwithstanding, Sam could have started that little scene in the bathroom as a misguided attempt to _save_ Dean; he was certainly selfless enough to do a stupid thing like that.

But then again, hadn’t the crossroads demon _told_ Dean that Sam wanted him? Hadn’t it been her words that had begun to shake that sun-warmed memory loose in the first place? Demons _knew_ shit like that: they could see into the darkest corners of a person’s heart. Maybe she’d seen into Sam’s.

Or maybe … maybe she’d seen into _Dean’s_. Maybe she’d seen his twisted desires for his brother and decided to lie about Sam in the hopes that it would push Dean into doing something. Watching him molest his unwilling little brother would probably be her idea of primetime entertainment.

 _What about after, then?_ he thought, swinging back the other way. _What about the way he was kissing me after?_ The siren song had been quiet then, with the hunger sated. Those soft, gentle kisses—the nudges to make him turn his head and kiss back—Sam wouldn’t have offered those if he hadn’t felt something, right?

Or maybe he’d been too lost in the afterglow to realize what he was doing, and whom he was doing it with.

Dean pulled out his phone for what had to be the five hundredth time. He flipped it open and stared down at the display. Sam was number three on speed dial. Dean could just press a button and have this whole thing settled in a few minutes.

But what was he supposed to say? _‘Hey, Sammy, I can’t stop thinking about that night we dry humped each other against the bathroom wall. You wanna go again, or is it just me?’_ probably wasn’t the way to go.

And Jesus Christ, what if Sam said no? What if he was pissed—or worse, _disgusted_ —that Dean had manipulated him?

Dean swore under his breath and lobbed the phone across the room. It bounced off the bed before hitting the floor, where it presented a mute reminder that Dean Winchester was a fucking coward. As he stared at it, wild eyed and a little frantic, the cell vibrated and a small red light flashed on and off.

Someone had just sent him a text.

With a sinking suspicion that he knew exactly who had just contacted him, Dean edged toward the phone. It wasn’t a mute reminder anymore: it was a goddamned snake. Very venomous. Fatal, even. He considered just leaving it there—nothing said that he had to read what _(Sam)_ whoever had texted him. He could just … accidentally drop the phone in the toilet.

 _Yeah, because that’s a solution._

Clenching his jaw, Dean picked up the phone and flipped it open. When asked if he wished to view his text message, he selected _yes_.

 **ARE YOU OK?**

Just eight letters and a fucking question mark and suddenly he was missing his brother like it had been a year instead of a week.

 _Fuck this shit_ , Dean thought. Within ten minutes, he was tossing his bag into the back seat of the Impala and peeling out of the parking lot. Sam hadn’t mentioned where he was going when he left—probably hadn’t known himself at that point—but it didn’t take a genius to figure out where he’d headed once he started thinking straight again.

When he reached I-90 almost two hours after he’d set out, Dean headed west. Toward South Dakota.

Toward his brother.


	8. Chapter 8

Sam was out back helping Bobby fix up one of the junkers that littered the salvage yard when he heard the rumble of a familiar motor. He fumbled the wrench he was holding and it fell out of his hand and onto the ground. Next to him, Bobby straightened to squint in the direction of the front drive. The engine gave one final purr and then cut off.

“Looks like Dean finally decided to show up,” Bobby noted, and then added, “I expect it’ll take me a few hours to finish up here, if you want to use the house.”

All the moisture in Sam’s mouth seemed to have evaporated. He nodded dumbly but couldn’t speak as he started past the rusted frame of a pickup toward the front of the house. Up ahead, the Impala’s door creaked open and then slammed shut. Behind him, Bobby turned up the radio and went back to work on the Volvo’s engine.

Sam hadn’t told Bobby exactly what had happened when he’d turned up on the man’s doorstep last week. He hadn’t needed to: Bobby opened the door, took one look at Sam standing there in dusty jeans and a t-shirt, with a full duffle slung over one shoulder, and said, “You boys have a disagreement, have you?” That had been close enough to the truth for Sam to agree, and Bobby had installed him in the spare room without any further discussion. Sam had moped around the house for a few hours before Bobby wandered back in and shoved a screwdriver in his hand, and that had been that.

Now that he was seconds away from seeing Dean again, Sam thought that maybe he should have spent a little more time figuring out what he was going to say to his brother, and a little less turning his hands black with grease underneath the hoods of Mustangs and Camaros. Not that any amount of preparation would have cleansed his mouth of that acidic, guilty taste.

Sam rounded the side of the house and there was Dean, leaning up against the side of the Impala and waiting for him. Despite the mid-June heat, Dean’s shoulders were hunched down in his leather jacket, the turned-up collar shadowing his neck. A pair of wrap-around sunglasses hid his eyes, and Sam wasn’t sure whether to be thankful that he didn’t have to try to meet Dean’s gaze, or worried that he couldn’t tell what his brother was thinking.

Dean had the siren song securely under control, but at this point that was pretty much a wasted effort when it came to Sam. After that night in the bathroom, Dean could have been covered in basilisk bile and Sam still would have had a hard time resisting the temptation to touch him.

Realizing just how close to yielding to that temptation he was, Sam drew to a stop a few feet away from his brother. He shoved his hands into his pockets and waited all of two seconds for Dean to say something before asking, “How’d you know I was here?”

Dean shrugged, his expression inscrutable. “Where else were you gonna go?”

Oh yeah. Sam stood there while the silence stretched out awkwardly, and then cleared his throat and said, “So, uh, why’d you come?”

“I got your message.”

After almost an entire week without a word from his brother, Sam had finally gotten worried enough to send a text to see how he was doing. He’d assumed, when Dean didn’t immediately text him back, that his brother wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. Apparently, he’d just decided to report back in person.

“Oh,” Sam said lamely.

“Yeah,” Dean answered, crossing his arms over his chest and settling himself more soundly against the Impala. His mouth twisted in a momentary grimace, and then he sighed and started, “Sam …”

Sam panicked and his mouth opened of its own accord to blurt out, “I’m so sorry, Dean—I didn’t—I didn’t mean to do that to you, I swear to God, I didn’t. I promise it won’t happen again, but if—if you want to split up, do separate hunts for a while or whatever, then I’d understand. Bobby said I could use one of his trucks, so you don’t have to worry about me hitching, and Jesus Christ, Dean, will you hit me already and get it over with?”

Sam’s body was trembling with adrenaline when he finally shut his mouth, but Dean seemed impassive. His expression was as impenetrable as ever as he uncrossed his arms and straightened. After a moment, he rolled his shoulders to loosen his muscles and said, “I could use a drink.”

“A drink?” Sam repeated numbly. “You want me to get you a _beer_?” He was starting to hate those stupid sunglasses that were making it near impossible to read Dean’s mood.

“You’d rather I kicked the crap out of you?” Dean’s tone was as empty as his face, and Sam didn’t know how to answer him. Okay, that wasn’t precisely true—the ‘yes’ burned behind his teeth like acid—but he didn’t know what answer Dean was looking for. Finally, unwilling to commit to anything that might come back and bite him in the ass, Sam started toward Bobby’s front door.

He didn’t think that Dean was going to follow him in, but he heard the screen door open and then bang shut while he was rummaging around in the refrigerator for a bottle. When he turned around, Dean was leaning in the kitchen doorway, and even though they were inside now, he was still wearing those frustrating sunglasses. Not wanting to get too close until he’d figured out what was going on here, Sam slid the bottle toward his brother along the counter.

Dean caught it in one hand and then used the lip of the counter to pop the cap off. “Aren’t you going to have one?” he asked once he’d taken a deep swig and wiped his lips with the back of one hand.

“Thanks, but I’d rather wait until I know whether I’m going to need painkillers first,” Sam mumbled.

Dean’s mouth tightened and he moved out of the doorway to sit down at the kitchen table. “I’m not gonna hit you, man,” he sighed.

Sam swallowed around the aching lump that had suddenly lodged in his throat before whispering, “Maybe you should.”

One of Dean’s eyebrows rose at that, and he tilted his head up. “Is that what you want? You think that’ll fix this?”

“Yes—no—I don’t know. Jesus, Dean, I _raped_ you! How the hell can you just sit there and—”

Surprise flickered across Dean’s face and was gone as quickly as it had come. “Why’d you kiss me?”

“—act like nothing’s—” Sam blinked as his brother’s question penetrated. “What?”

Dean pushed the bottle of beer away. “It’s a simple question, Sam.”

No, it really wasn’t. Sam would rather have Dean lash out at him: would rather have to spit his teeth out into Bobby’s sink than answer his brother. But Dean didn’t seem to want to settle this the usual way: for once he actually wanted to _talk_ , and Sam just … just couldn’t watch the disgust bloom on Dean’s face when he realized exactly how sick his little brother was.

Dean sat there for a few moments, obviously waiting for Sam to answer, and then muttered, “Yeah, right,” under his breath and pushed to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Sam asked.

Dean licked his lips in the first sign of nerves that Sam had seen since his brother had shown up. “Out. Away. Somewhere.”

Then he was turning away, he was headed for the front hall, and Sam didn’t know if he actually meant to _leave_ or not, but the idea of Dean climbing into the Impala and pulling away in a cloud of dust was suddenly vivid in his mind. He jerked forward into a lunge after his brother, and his hand was closed around Dean’s bicep almost before he’d registered his own movement. His only thought was that Dean couldn’t leave yet—wasn’t _allowed_ to leave yet—because however awkward and horrible this meeting was, it was still a thousand times better than the week Sam had just spent on his own.

Dean turned his head slowly, and Sam realized that moving this close to his brother had been a very bad idea. From here, for the first time, he could see the faint, lingering bite mark he’d left on Dean’s neck. The shadows of Dean’s turned-up collar had been hiding it, and Sam thought that he’d just figured out why his brother was wearing that coat today in spite of the heat.

Dean hadn’t wanted that reminder between them. Hadn’t wanted it staring Sam in the face. Maybe he’d even been a little worried about the effect it would have on Sam, and if he hadn’t then he should have been, because Sam was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe.

Dean had gone very still beneath his hand, wariness in every line of his body. He licked his lips again and Sam tightened his grip involuntarily. _Just let go and step away_ , Sam told himself, but all of his attention had focused on that goddamned perfect mouth of Dean’s. He wanted to taste it again. Wanted to taste _Dean_ again.

Sam leaned in and, although his muscles tensed beneath Sam’s fingers, Dean didn’t pull away. With a supreme act of effort, Sam managed to stop with his lips hovering just over his brother’s. Dean exhaled and Sam breathed in his breath: tasted alcohol and, beneath that, the cinnamon gum Dean must have been chewing in the car. He’d be able to taste more than that if he just leaned forward a fraction of an inch.

“Tell me to stop,” he pleaded. “God, Dean, tell me to back off.”

Dean’s lips parted, but he didn’t say anything.

Sam raised one shaking hand to the sunglasses that were hiding his brother’s eyes. His fingers hooked beneath the plastic frames and then he was brushing along Dean’s skin as he drew the glasses up and off. Dean’s eyes were open beneath them. The thin ring of green surrounding his blown pupils was so vivid it sent little shocks of electricity straight to Sam’s crotch.

Sam tipped forward.

Dean’s eyelids fluttered closed as Sam kissed him with a gentle, almost questioning pressure. His lower lip was pliant as Sam sucked it into his own mouth. Deepening the kiss, Sam pinned his brother’s body with his own, and watched as Dean started to lose his grip on the siren song.

He could feel Dean’s hands in his hair now, and Dean’s mouth was becoming responsive under his. Dean was giving in, he was sending up the white flag, and Sam could have anything he wanted. He could drag Dean back into the kitchen and push him down across Bobby’s table and …

 _Oh God, what am I doing?_

Sam stumbled back so quickly that some of his hair, caught in Dean’s ring, tore loose. Ignoring that unimportant twinge of pain, he sprinted to the far side of the room, where he leaned next to the refrigerator and sucked in shallow, panicked breaths. Dean clung to the doorframe where Sam had left him, the siren song flickering across his skin like foxfire.

Sam watched as his brother struggled to get himself back under control. He wished that he could say that his urge to fuck Dean raw was fading along with the inhuman glow of his skin, but it seemed to be strengthening instead. His blood pounded through him, demanding _mineminemine_ with each beat of his heart.

Dean opened his eyes and looked over at him. “You did it again,” he said unsteadily.

“I’m sorry, Dean. I—” Sam snapped his mouth shut as his brother pushed away from the doorway where they’d been kissing and came toward him.

Dean’s face was dark: his eyes intent. “I want to know why,” he growled, and Sam’s cock leaped along with his heart.

“I’m sor—”

“I don’t want to hear how fucking sorry you are,” Dean snapped, and he was _right there_ , one hand braced on the wall on either side of Sam’s head. Heat poured off of his body and soaked into Sam’s trembling muscles.

 _Don’t touch don’t touch._

“I want to know why you kissed me.”

“I—I couldn’t help it—I’m sorry, I—”

“Shut up.” Something burning and heavy flickered in Dean’s eyes as they caught Sam’s and held them. “Do you want me?”

Sam shivered.

“Do you?” Dean prodded.

“D-Dean, I—”

“Just answer the fucking question.”

Sam closed his eyes. He felt so goddamned _exposed_ , and if he kept looking at his brother then he was going to fuck him right here in the middle of Bobby’s kitchen whether Dean wanted it or not.

“Sam …” A warning.

Sam opened his mouth and whispered, “Yes.”

Dean made a choked sound—in either disgust or disbelief—and then demanded, “How long?”

 _In for a penny_ , Sam thought, and admitted, “Since I walked in on you and Christi Mollin.”

There was a pause while Dean worked through all the girls he’d been with to place that name, and then he said, in a strange, strangled voice, “That was before you left for Stanford.”

Since that didn’t seem to require an answer, Sam kept quiet. He was busy steeling himself for the ass kicking and the shouts of revulsion that were bound to follow. The tentative brush against his lips was completely unexpected.

Sam opened his eyes and Dean was closer than he should have been. Sam’s mouth dropped open in surprise and Dean shoved his tongue in, stepping forward so that his body was flush with Sam’s.

Sam was pretty sure that he blacked out for a few seconds because the next thing he knew, he had Dean backed up against the counter and Dean’s jacket and shirt were off. Sam’s mouth was fastened to the bite he’d left last time and was doing his best to make the damned thing permanent, and Dean’s hands were unzipping his fly.

Although it caused him near-physical pain, Sam pulled away. “No,” he panted. “No, I’m not doing this to you again.”

Dean’s fingers dipped inside the waistband of Sam’s jeans and pulled him back. “Want this, Sammy. Want you.”

No, he didn’t. Dean was only saying that because he was a self-sacrificing son of a bitch, and this was _exactly_ why Sam had never admitted his feelings to his brother before. Dean would cut his own heart out if Sam asked him to, and this was just another way he could ruin himself for his little brother. Hell, what was a little incest after you’d sold your soul for someone?

“You didn’t rape me,” Dean insisted, licking a line across Sam’s neck. “I wanted you. Can’t—can’t rape the willing.”

“No.”

Dean let out a shaky laugh. “You’re a stubborn asshole, you know that?” he muttered.

“I know what you’re doing,” Sam protested as he tried to extract himself from his brother’s grip. “But you don’t have to. I don’t need—”

Dean jerked Sam harder against him. “This isn’t a goddamned pity-fuck, Sam.”

Shaking his head as he took a step back, Sam set his foot down on Dean’s discarded shirt and sent himself crashing to the floor. Dean, who had his hands wedged into Sam’s pants, came with him. His knee hit the linoleum with a painful-sounding crack and he swore. Sam shoved down the impulse to make sure that his brother was okay and seized the opportunity to scramble away and make for the front door.

Injured knee or not, Dean was on him before he’d made it halfway across the living room, tackling him from behind and knocking them both into a pile of books. “More trouble than you’re worth,” Dean panted, climbing up Sam’s body. Sam squirmed beneath his brother and accidentally caught him in the face with one elbow.

“Shit!” Dean yelled.

Sam’s gut twisted. Oh, God, this was such a disaster. He pushed over onto his back and reached up toward his brother. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“No!” Dean snapped. “Bit my fucking tongue.” He opened his mouth and stuck it out as evidence and Sam was seized with the sudden urge to lean up and bite it again for him.

Dean felt his renewed interest—difficult for him to miss it, straddling Sam’s crotch like he was—and narrowed his eyes before pinning Sam to the floor with an arm across his throat.

“Let me up, Dean. I’m serious.”

“So,” Dean said conversationally, “Explain this one for me.” He ground his pelvis down and Sam bit his lip at the feel of Dean’s erection pressing against his own. “ _You_ seem to be enjoying this. _I’m_ obviously enjoying it. And yet, for some reason, I’m still not getting fucked.”

“You’re not yourself,” Sam panted. “It’s the—the hunger is making you—”

“Bullshit,” Dean insisted, and ground down again, making Sam’s eyes roll back in his head. Sam was still trying to recover from that sensation when Dean popped the buttons on his jeans with one hand and worked his way inside. The siren song was coming loose again as he started to work Sam’s cock, and it would have taken a saint to say no to Dean twice in one day when he was like this.

Sam, who wasn’t even approaching sainthood, stopped fighting and used his heavier mass to flip Dean over.

Dean made an unhappy sound as he lost his hold on Sam’s cock, but Sam didn’t mind. He’d been far too close to coming, and as nice as that would have felt, it wasn’t what Dean was asking for. Wasn’t the way Sam wanted to end this.

His vision was filming over with violet as he looked down at Dean’s flushed, needy face. Just as it had a week ago, the hunger inside of his brother was lashing out toward him: a two-way link that both spiked his desire and fed on it.

The sensation was less distracting this time around: mostly because now he knew what to expect. A part of Sam’s mind swiftly folded around the hunger, and with a stray thought he slowed the drain. Underneath him, Dean groaned in protest at the restraint, and then shut up again as Sam fumbled his jeans open.

Sam shoved his brother’s pants down and then used his foot to tug them the rest of the way off while he mapped out Dean’s chest with his mouth. Dean tasted just like he remembered: like sunlight and safety and thunder and violence all wrapped up together. The heady mix of contradictions made him bite down on the side of his brother’s stomach hard enough that Dean hissed. Worried that he’d crossed the line between fun and painful, Sam started to lift his head, but Dean’s hands were in his hair suddenly, holding him there.

With the hunger riding him, Dean wasn’t in the state of mind to think coherently, let alone make his voice work, but Sam heard the fragmented command in his head as clearly as if his brother had been shouting: **harder—bite me—mark me—just like that, fuck—yours, Sam—always yours.**

 _I’m going insane_ , Sam thought, but … but what if he wasn’t? Resisting the press of Dean’s hands and the demands of his own desire, he pulled his mouth away from that soft skin to look up at his brother’s face. Dean was staring at the ceiling, his eyes unfocused and his jaw slack with need.

 _Dean._ Sam focused his thoughts, directing them down the link the hunger had forged between them. **Dean, look at me.**

Dean blinked.

 **Look at me** , Sam thought again, more resolutely, and Dean’s gaze slid down from the ceiling. Oh shit, this was actually happening. Postponing the freak out he already planned to have over this new development, Sam concentrated on communicating with his dazed brother. **What do you want?**

 **Wha—Sammy? Is that—how’re you—**

 **What do you want, Dean?**

Dean’s eyes focused a little more as Sam forced himself between Dean and the hunger. He could sense his brother laid out before him: everything Dean felt, everything he was. Dean’s walls were all that stood between them, and up close those defenses looked far flimsier than Sam had ever suspected they might be.

 **Sam.** Dean’s sudden fear beat at him. **I don’t think I can—**

 **Shh. Just let me in. It’s okay: I won’t hurt you.** Sam traced small, reassuring circles into his brother’s chest with one hand. Moved up Dean’s body and brushed their lips together. “I love you,” he whispered.

Dean shuddered beneath him and the walls crumbled. Sam eased into his brother’s trembling mind and a rush of memory and emotion instantly bewildered him. He saw, in rapid succession, a thousand little moments when Dean had loved him: saw a hundred times he’d looked at Sam and wanted. Dean’s memory of the first time he had noticed Sam as an adult, rather than an annoying kid brother, overlaid everything in a golden wash of sunlight. Sam could taste the summer air; could see himself playing touch football in Werry Park with a few of his friends. Could feel Dean’s arousal in his own gut.

Stunned, he pulled back a little from his brother’s mind. Jesus, Dean had been telling the truth. He _did_ want Sam.

 **Sam, please, I—I need—so hungry—**

Sam obediently gripped Dean’s cock with one hand and started working it with long, slow strokes. At the same time, he twined his own mind around his brother’s, letting Dean see himself through Sam’s eyes. Letting him see himself as something valuable and precious for once. Startled, Dean tried to pull away from the contact but Sam held him tight.

 **No. I love you, Dean. I love you.**

 **You sure—oh God, do that again—you’re not a girl?** The words were joking, but in the midst of such intimate contact, Sam could sense the unease that had prompted them. He was a little saddened, but unsurprised, by Dean’s reaction: by his brother’s inability to think of himself in such a positive light.

Not wanting to make Dean any more uncomfortable, but unwilling to break off the contact just yet, Sam directed the flow of his memories into something that his brother would find more acceptable: the fantasies he’d had about the two of them. Dean relaxed against him, body and mind, and let the hunger and his own arousal carry him away.

 **Fuck me—please—feels so good—please, Sam—God, now—can’t wait—fuck me now—**

Sam felt the hunger surge against his restraining hold and realized that he’d have to do something about it soon if he wanted Dean coherent for this. He considered just cutting it off, but then he remembered how weak Dean got after feeding. Dean would kill Sam if he cockblocked him like that.

In his fevered mind, Sam could only come up with one possible solution. He waited for one of his more frequent daydreams to flicker past—giving his brother a blowjob while Dean drove the Impala down a deserted road—and then swiped his thumb roughly against the tip of his brother’s cock while concentrating on that image. Dean made a strangled noise, his mind flooding indigo against Sam’s, and came.

Sam immediately shut down the connection between them, shoving the hunger back inside his brother where it belonged and locking the door to his own mind behind it. Dean panted through the rest of his orgasm and then went limp. Letting his brother have a few moments to pull himself together, Sam yanked his own shirt over his head and used it to wipe his hand clean.

As he tossed the now-damp shirt to one side, Dean stirred weakly beneath him and complained, “I can’t move.” Sam traced one hand down his brother’s cheek, and Dean made an annoyed noise and glared at him. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” Sam asked innocently, and kissed the tip of Dean’s nose.

“You _know_ what,” Dean growled.

Sam hummed to himself and edged up to kiss first Dean’s right eyelid, and then his left.

“I’m gonna kick your ass when I can move again.”

“You didn’t have a problem with me touching you a few minutes ago.”

“That wasn’t ‘touching’, that was sex,” Dean groused. “Speaking of which, what the hell happened to the you fucking me plan?”

“Who said anything happened to it?” Sam rolled his hips, grinning as Dean’s eyes widened at the feel of Sam’s erection. “You didn’t think I’d let you zone out through our first time, did you?”

A scowl instantly buried the appreciation he’d seen on Dean’s face.

Sam ignored him, which was a lot easier to do now that he’d seen how sappy Dean could get in the privacy of his own head—although that whole candlelit sex in the bathtub thing _definitely_ had to happen. Nudging the side of his brother’s neck with his nose— _God, he smells good_ —he murmured, “You still interested?”

“You gonna stop dicking around and _do_ something?” Dean shot back.

In response, Sam moved suddenly, thrusting against his brother’s hip and biting down on the corner of Dean’s jaw. Dean trembled helplessly and, on a low exhale, breathed, “Holy shit.”

Sam released his jaw and then licked at the red mark he’d just left. “Do you have any lube?” He was fairly certain that, despite Dean’s uncertainty about whatever was going on between them, he’d come prepared. Old habits died hard, after all.

Sure enough, Dean nodded and answered, “B-Back pocket. Jeans.”

Sam got up long enough to fetch the lube and strip off the rest of his own clothes. When he lay back down on top of his brother, Dean still wasn’t completely recovered.

“You know,” Sam mused, dragging his hands down his brother’s chest, “I can do whatever I want to you right now.” He cupped Dean’s softening cock in one hand while his mouth returned to the freshly darkened bite mark on the side of his neck. “ _Anything._ ”

“Fuck,” Dean said faintly.

Sam lifted his head and his playful mood softened at the naked expression of vulnerability on his brother’s face. “Hey,” he said, wishing that he could have that mind-to-mind contact back again without inviting the hunger in as a lewd third party.

He watched as Dean realized how open his expression was and quickly rebuilt his defenses. It was like watching a magician at work: a few seconds, and there was confident, badass Dean Winchester again. Sam loved his brother—loved all of him—but right now he wished that he could stuff that particular rabbit back into the hat.

“Are you gonna fuck me or stare at me all day?”

“I can’t do both?” Sam asked wistfully. But he could sense that Dean had had enough of his ‘emo crap’ for today.

Sure enough, Dean grinned up at him cockily. “It’s your party, man. If you really want to pussyfoot around until Bobby comes in here to check up on us, then be my guest. You can explain to him why we’re—”

That really wasn’t the mental image that Sam needed right now, so he darted down and caught Dean’s lips with his own. Swallowed the rest of his brother’s muffled words and slipped his tongue inside that inviting mouth. He wondered what that wet warmth would feel like around his cock, then decided that there was plenty of time to find out later.

The hunger tried to latch onto him again as he slowly pushed one lube-slicked finger inside of Dean, and Sam shoved it away. Held it firmly locked down for his brother. They were doing this clean the first time. He wanted to see Dean’s expression. Wanted Dean to see him.

“Shit, that’s cold,” Dean gasped. “Couldn’t you warm it up first or something?”

Sam left a trail of bites along his brother’s jaw up to his ear, where he hovered with his lips just brushing against freckle-dusted skin. “Dean, for once in your life, just shut up and let me drive.”

When he worked a second finger in beside the first, Dean’s breath stuttered. The weakness must finally have been dissipating, because Dean raised his hands and clutched at the back of Sam’s neck. Dragged him down and kissed him deep and hard and messy.

After an unknown length of time, Sam broke the kiss so that he could focus on opening Dean: it was impossible to maintain any kind of concentration with his brother’s oral fetish hard at work bruising his lips. Although, as the unmarked strip of skin down the center of Dean’s throat caught his attention, Sam had to admit that he probably wasn’t one to talk. He sucked at the sensitive flesh above his brother’s Adam’s apple just hard enough to leave a bruise. See Dean try to hide that one.

 _Mine_ , he thought. _You’re mine and I’m not sharing, damn it._ He forced a third finger inside and Dean made this high-pitched keening noise, letting his legs fall open wider. His hand came up and locked around Sam’s left bicep as though he were trying to ground himself.

“Would you— _fuck_ —stop screwing around d-down there and— _Jesus Christ_ —fuck me already?”

Sam should have known that it was too much to ask Dean to shut up. Exasperated, he released Dean’s throat and caught his brother’s eyes. He smirked as he curled his fingers just right inside of his brother and Dean’s entire body jerked. “You really want me to stop?”

As Sam started to pull his hand free, Dean twisted to catch his wrist. “You do and I’ll shoot you, I swear to God,” he ground out.

Sam considered teasing him some more and then roughly thrust his fingers back in: he didn’t really want to prolong this any more than Dean did right now. When he braced his fingers against the spot he’d just discovered, Dean’s hand fell open around his wrist, and a hoarse “Sam!” was torn from his brother's throat.

Sam lowered himself back down and rested his forehead against Dean's. “I’m right here,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

“J-Jesus Christ, ju-just do it a-already.”

Oh, God, he wanted to, he really did. But Sam shook his head. “If I—I don’t want to hurt you, Dean, I—”

“Please.” Dean’s voice was desperate. “Want to—just li-like that, fuck—want to feel you. Please, Sammy—fuck— _please_.”

Dean begging had to be illegal in all fifty states because Sam’s brain immediately short-circuited as a fresh wave of _want_ swept over him. It had nothing to do with the siren song or the hunger and everything to do with his brother. With Dean yielding and open and eager.

He yanked his fingers free, ignoring his brother’s objecting grunt, and then spent a frantic minute trying to get the lube open before he realized that the top was already off. Dean wasn’t helping, writhing underneath him and clutching at his ass and making these little broken pleas of _now_ and _need you_ and _Sammy_.

Finally, Sam had himself slicked up and braced against Dean’s entrance, his gaze fixed on his brother’s face. Dean’s mouth was parted; those green eyes hazed over but fixed steadfastly on Sam.

“Do it—fuck, Sammy, just—please—I need—”

Sam took a deep breath, centering himself, and then pushed in. Heat like a mid-August day in New England surrounded him: moist and close and almost unbearable. God, Dean was tight. Sam should have prepped him more; there was no way this wasn’t hurting.

But Dean didn’t seem to be in pain as he brought his legs up, hooking them around Sam’s lower back and pulling him in even deeper. Sam curled over. Sliding his arms underneath Dean’s body, he held him close. Made himself go slow while he waited for Dean to loosen around him.

It didn’t take long, and then he was pumping his hips at a steady rhythm while Dean thrust up to meet him, moaning as Sam found that perfect spot again. Dean’s revived erection was trapped between them, leaking and feverishly warm, and Sam forced his body down more solidly, giving his brother some friction to push against.

“God, Dean, you’re so—fuck—so good, I—I don’t—so fucking tight, I—” Sam was fairly certain that those words were coming out of his mouth, but they were disjointed: unimportant compared to the heat encasing him.

Dean shook as Sam, not bothering to hold back at all anymore, slammed into him. Sam knew that Dean’s back was digging into the tumbled pile of books, knew that he was edging them across the floor with every thrust, and didn’t care. He needed more.

He shoved their mouths together, taking what he wanted, and Dean let him. Dean was _submitting_ , and that was so goddamned hot that Sam’s orgasm blindsided him. His grip tightened instinctively on Dean’s back and his hips snapped forward in a stuttering rhythm. The desperate whimpers Dean was making, only partially muffled by Sam’s mouth, woke up Sam’s brain enough for him to work a hand between them. He fisted his brother’s cock and pumped his hand once, spilling Dean over the edge as well.

 _Mine. He’s mine._

Sam’s orgasm released him reluctantly, leaving him panting and sated. He considered rolling off of Dean and then just settled down where he was, his forehead resting against one of his brother’s sweat-soaked shoulders.

“You alive?” he croaked when he could speak again.

Dean’s breath chuffed out in a soft laugh. “No. You?”

Sam was about to answer in the negative when a shadow fell over them. He tensed even before the words, spoken in a horribly familiar drawl, penetrated: “My, haven’t you boys been _naughty_.”


	9. Chapter 9

It was Bobby’s voice, and it was Bobby’s body standing over them, but those weren’t Bobby’s words, and it was most certainly not Bobby leering out at them from indigo eyes. Sam pulled clumsily out of Dean and scrambled toward the loose floorboard where Bobby kept his emergency stores of holy water. His brother’s pained grunt hadn’t yet faded from the air when Sam found himself lifted and hurled against the far wall.

Twisting in midair, he caught the brunt of the collision with his shoulder rather than his head, and then crashed to the floor. Toppled stacks of books dug into his back and he winced as he sat up.

“Oh, yes. Very naughty,” the demon wearing Bobby’s body chortled as it paced toward him. Invisible tendrils of power snaked around Sam’s neck and drew him back into the air. He could just feel the floorboards brushing his toes, but he was too far up to put any weight on them. He was choking, darkness was descending, and then the pressure at his throat loosened grudgingly.

“No fair fainting on me,” the demon scolded.

Dangling in the air like a gutted side of beef, Sam looked past the demon to his brother. Dean, lying naked and exposed on the floor, looked horribly still. For an endless moment, Sam thought that his brother was dead, and then he noticed the slight rise and fall of Dean's chest.

Oh thank God.

“Lovely like that, isn’t he?” the demon taunted, pulling Sam’s attention back to it. “Well fucked and docile.” It giggled: a sound absurdly incongruous with Bobby’s stoic face. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep your hands off him.”

The demon was talking as though it knew them, and the only two demons who were both capable of human possession and also harbored a serious grudge against them were Meg and the crossroads demon with whom Dean had made his deal. And Meg showed herself as an oily black stain in her victim’s eyes, not as this purple fog.

“You’re that … that crossroads demon …” Sam gasped past the pressure on his throat.

But the demon shook its head, indigo-smoked eyes glinting with humor. “Close, but no cigar. Here’s a hint, though.”

It winked and arousal flooded Sam’s body. Fear drowned in violet need, and his hips rolled once before the surge ebbed away. And that … that wasn’t possible. Succubae were strictly corporeal demons: it was one of the things that made them slightly easier to hunt than other demonic breeds.

“But … you can’t …”

“Possess someone? I know.” The demon’s smile melted into a mischievous leer. “Amazing what a few extra meals will do for a girl, isn’t it? I mean, I knew it was going to be a rush, but I had no idea just how much Dean’s little _contributions_ would do for me.” She leaned in closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Be a dear and don’t let the cat out of the bag, though, or everyone will want one.”

Oh hell, that was all they needed: an army of super powered succubae. “You’re … getting what … what you want,” Sam wheezed. “Let him … go.”

“Oh, don’t worry about Dean, Sam: he’s fine. He’s just having a little time out while you and I chat. Demon to demon.”

“I’m not … a … demon.”

“Fine. Demon to human infused with demon essence, if you want to be technical.” The succubus tilted her head. “It’s sort of funny, isn’t it? Now you and your brother have even more in common. No wonder you two are fucking like bunnies.”

It wasn’t as though Sam hadn’t heard that expression before, but the way the succubus seemed to caress the words made it sound vile and low. His stomach rolled and he insisted, “It’s not … not like that.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t. This is more of a one-sided affair, isn’t it, Sam?”

He frowned at her in confusion but didn’t try to speak.

“Didn’t you know? Couldn’t you feel him pulling away when you—now, how can I say this delicately?—when you _‘plowed in’_? Or did you just delude yourself that your brother is as sick as you?” The succubus edged even closer, Bobby’s face twisted into a corrupt joy. “How’d you get him to give in, Sam? You make those puppy dog eyes at big brother and say ‘pretty please’? Or did you just _take_ what you wanted until that delicious hunger woke up and he couldn’t say no anymore?”

Everything tumbled into place suddenly, and Sam thought, _She doesn’t know that I saw inside his head_. And Jesus, if that connection _hadn’t_ occurred, then her words would be all too plausible. This, he realized, was the trap that Dean had been warning him about all along.

She’d set the wheels in motion, knowing how they felt—knowing how insecure they each were in those feelings—and then, when they finally found each other, she’d planned on breaking them apart with lies. She must have a similar speech planned out for Dean, only his would be full of how ‘grateful’ Sam was for everything his big brother had done: of how the siren song had dragged Sam in against his will.

How richly ironic it all would have been.

He started to laugh.

The succubus’ face darkened with suspicion and Sam felt her fumbling touch at his mind, trying to see what was so amusing. He was more than happy to let her in on the joke.

“I saw insi … inside him,” he panted. “He … he wants me.” The noose of power around his neck loosened more as the succubus stared at him in surprise. “He loves me,” Sam continued more strongly. “And he saw inside me too, so he knows that I love him back. You can try to spin this any way you want, but Dean’s mine and I’m his and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.”

Rage and hate warred on her face, and her power constricted again, cutting off all but a thin flow of air that he had to fight for. “Maybe not,” she hissed, “But I still know something you don’t. I may not be able to touch _you_ , but I can still break _Dean_ —I can shatter him to pieces.”

 _No,_ Sam thought. _She can’t—she won’t._ The succubus _needed_ Dean to keep feeding her so that this power trip of hers didn’t come to an abrupt end.

Either she read the thought off his face or had made her way into his mind despite his efforts to keep her out, because the succubus chuckled nastily and said, “Oh, honey. Dean wants you to live. He’d feed for me if he had to crawl on his hands and knees through a field of barbed wire to do it.”

 _No,_ Sam thought again, but he couldn’t speak—he could barely _breathe_ —and his eyes burned with unshed tears as the succubus turned away from him and stalked toward his brother.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean’s body felt as though it had been encased in lead. He knew that Sam was still somewhere in the room because he could hear his brother’s voice, but he couldn’t understand what he was saying. Everything came through garbled, as though Sam’s words had been shredded and then shoved back together with no particular care. It was probably the demon’s doing: Dean was reasonably sure that Sam, no matter how surprised or angry he was, would say _‘nda eh aws diseni em oto, os eh skown taht I velo mhi kabc.’_

The demon’s voice turned nasty after that, but Dean couldn’t make out what it was saying either. Could only hear Bobby’s familiar tones mutilated into something feminine and mocking. It seemed impossible, but he had a pretty good idea who had stopped in to pay them a little visit.

When Sam didn’t respond to the demon’s words, Dean wasn’t too startled to find Bobby’s face edging into his vision. He noticed without much surprise, as Bobby crouched down beside him, that the man’s eyes were filmed over with indigo.

The flows of power keeping his mouth shut unwove and Dean immediately demanded, “What did you do to my brother, bitch?”

“Now, Dean. Is that any way to talk to your savior?”

 _‘Savior.’_ Yeah, right.

“If you hurt him,” Dean growled, “I’ll rip you apart, so help me God. We had a deal, damn it!”

“Simmer down,” the succubus said, and it was almost like Bobby had surfaced for a moment; Dean must have heard the man use those exact words in that exact tone of voice about a hundred times. Then the succubus continued, “I haven’t harmed so much as a hair on his precious head,” and the illusion passed.

“See?” she added, and the power that was encasing Dean shifted to lift his head. He had a few seconds to take in his brother, hanging in midair with his eyes wide and locked on Dean, and then the succubus’ power slammed Dean back into the floor hard enough that he tasted copper at the back of his mouth.

Blinking to clear his blurred vision, he said, “Let him go. You’re getting your pound of flesh.”

“Mmm,” she agreed, “And in such a fascinating way.” She propped her head on one hand and grinned down at him. “You and Sam … _brothers_ … how deliciously _sinful_.”

“Blow me,” Dean muttered, and then quickly added, “Um, not literally.”

“As enjoyable as that might be, I’ve got places to go. You know how it is, Dean: so many willing bodies, so little time.”

 _Murdering bitch._ “Yeah, I get that a lot. Surprised you do, though.” He smiled at her sweetly. “You’re a lousy lay.”

She hissed and the pressure of her power increased as though she was trying to shove him through the floor. Dean struggled for breath, his fingers scrambling for purchase on worn wood, and then, just as he was about to pass out, the weight lifted. He gasped in fresh air, choked on it, and went into a harsh coughing jag.

“How does it feel to be a murderer, Dean?” the succubus hissed, leaning close. “You had a pretty good run your first time out of the gate, didn’t you? Poor Helen and her little bundle of joy.”

Dean felt like she was speaking in tongues. He was aware that her words would make sense if he let them, but for some reason he was resisting comprehension. Was staving it off with something close to desperation.

Bobby’s face swam in his vision, lips curled in an unfamiliar sneer. “You _did_ know that Helen was pregnant, didn’t you?”

The world short-circuited for a few seconds.

When it came back online, blood was roaring in Dean’s ears, but it wasn’t nearly loud enough to drown out the succubus’ voice: “ … just six weeks along, but still … it was going to be a little baby girl, Dean. Helen was going to name her Mary Claire, after her grandmother. Sort of ironic, isn’t it?”

Dean’s throat worked. Pushed out a splintered, “No.”

“Don’t believe me? The coroner’s report is on file, if you want to see it. You’ll have to take my word about the gender and the name, but still … a baby _is_ a baby, isn’t it? Or, well, in this case it’s just a used up cluster of dead cells.”

 _No. Oh God, no._ Dean couldn’t seem to get his lungs to work properly: it felt like something had broken inside of his chest. He shut his eyes to block out the succubus’ hateful smile and was assaulted by the image of a little girl with pigtails and a sunburned nose.

“So you go ahead,” the succubus hissed in his ear. “Fuck your little brother’s brains out. But you’ll always remember, won’t you, that you traded little Mary Claire’s life—her _chance_ —for Sammy’s.”

Dean made a small, hurt noise as his chest clenched and that shattered place grated inside of him. He didn’t regret it. He didn’t regret trading that little girl’s future—her entire existence—for his brother, and that was the sickest, most unforgivable thing about this whole mess.

“Have a nice, _long_ life, Dean,” the succubus purred, and then an oily, indigo mist spilled across Dean’s face. Her power vanished from around his body and he used his freedom to roll onto his side and bring his knees up to his chest. He was shuddering. Felt so cold, and dirty, and _wrong_.

Sam was shouting his name. Sam’s hands were on his shoulders, trying to get him to uncurl, but Dean ignored his brother. He kept his eyes tightly shut and stared at the little girl who twirled and laughed against the darkness there.


	10. Chapter 10

Bobby wasn’t blind, and he wasn’t a complete moron, so it wasn’t difficult to figure out just what John Winchester’s boys had been up to when the succubus used his body to walk in on them. He had also been aware for her ‘chats’ with the boys: she either hadn’t cared that he was still alert, or she was too new to the gig to figure out how to lock him up inside his own head. The upshot of which was that he felt awkward as hell, standing here while Sam _(naked)_ tried to coax Dean _(also naked)_ out of himself.

Bobby could tell that Sam’s pleas and soft words weren’t working, and he wasn’t surprised. Dean never had been one for false comforts. _So are you gonna do something about it or just stand here with your thumb up your ass?_ he asked himself, and then stepped forward to grip Sam’s shoulder.

“Sam.”

“… Dean, come on, man, don’t do this, not now. You don’t have to say anything, just look at me. Please, Dean …”

“Sam!” Bobby called, louder, and shook him.

This time Sam’s head came up. From the dazed expression on his face, he’d forgotten that Bobby was in the room. His mouth closed and opened and then closed again. It was probably the first time that Bobby had seen the boy at a loss for words.

“Why don’t you get some clothes on?” Bobby suggested.

Sam flushed, but his jaw firmed with determination. “I’m not leaving him.”

“Sam …”

“No.” And he pulled his shoulder out of Bobby’s hand and hunched over his brother again.

Bobby gave up on Sam for the time being and stepped around so that he was standing in front of Dean. Looking down at Dean—naked and shivering and curled in on himself—he wanted, more than anything, to drop down and pull the boy into his arms and tell him that everything was going to be all right.

 _That’s not what he needs, Singer, and you know it._

Bobby spared a moment to wonder if Sam would ever forgive him for this, and then barked out, “Dean! On your feet.”

Sure enough, Sam snapped his head up with an expression of furious disbelief. He was still glaring at Bobby when Dean opened his eyes and blinked slowly at the floor.

“I gave you an order, Winchester,” Bobby added sharply.

“Jesus Christ, Bobby,” Sam exploded. “Leave him alone, he’s—”

He cut himself off as he felt Dean move beneath his hands. Looked down at his brother in surprise as Dean rolled over onto his stomach. His hands lifted from Dean’s skin as Dean, swaying and with vacant, dead eyes, forced himself first to his knees, and then up into a standing position. Sam rose as well and hovered behind his brother anxiously.

“I want you to go wash up,” Bobby said. His voice was softer, but his tone remained firm.

“Yes, sir,” Dean muttered, his gaze on the floor. He turned and shuffled toward the hall and Sam started after him.

“Not you, Sam.”

Sam glared over his shoulder at Bobby. “I’m not—”

“Dean’s old enough to take a shower by himself.”

“Be fine, Sammy,” Dean mumbled, and then disappeared down the hall without waiting for a response. A few moments later, Bobby heard the bathroom door close. He looked back to find Sam pulling his boxers back on like he wanted to strangle someone. His mood wasn’t going to perk up any at what Bobby was going to have to say to him next.

“You can use the shower in the garage,” Bobby offered hopefully. If Sam left of his own accord, this discussion might never have to happen.

“I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s all right.”

For an instant, Bobby had nothing but sympathy for John Winchester, who had put up with this kind of nonsense for far longer than Bobby himself could have endured it. Then he remembered that Sam’s attitude _(and Dean’s, too; don’t forget him)_ was a direct consequence of the man’s shortsightedness when it came to his own family, and the moment passed.

Bobby cleared his throat, and then plunged right in with: “I’m gonna be honest here, Sam. I think you’re the last person he needs to see right now.”

The flash of fury in Sam’s normally gentle eyes actually frightened him into taking a step back. The boy’s hands clenched into fists as he drew himself up to his full height. “You don’t get to judge us.”

“I’m not trying to,” Bobby answered, and honestly, he’d been doing his damndest to put … _that_ … out of his mind until he’d gotten Dean functioning again. “Dean doesn’t think too highly of himself: I think you know that. He’s been messed up since the day your dad first dragged him here, and he’s only gotten worse.”

Sam was looking mutinous—the boy never had liked to hear anyone criticize his big brother—but Bobby kept right on with: “He’s got his priorities all screwed to hell—mostly where you’re concerned.”

Sam flushed, obviously torn between embarrassment and anger. “Dean and I—”

“I’m not _talking_ about that.” Not until he’d had a little more time to wrap his head around it. “Look, Sam, I think we both know that Dean measures his worth based on how well he’s doing by you. This thing—with the woman and the … the baby. He’s got it all mixed up in his head with protecting you, and you are the last person who’s gonna be able to change that.”

Sam’s forehead creased in a thoughtful manner, but hostility still simmered in his eyes. “He’s my brother. I think I know how to—”

“I mean it, Sam. He’s not ready to talk to you about it. Might never be. But he _needs_ to talk, and fast too, or he’s gonna put together some damnfool notion of what happened and slap a coat of cement over it and call it the truth. And then there won’t be anything that you, or I, or anyone else will be able say to change his mind.”

“But it isn’t his fault!” Sam blurted in frustration.

“I know that, and you know that, but Dean is in that bathroom right now convincing himself otherwise. So I don’t care what you do, but I want you to get out of here and leave us alone for a few hours.”

Sam’s jaw was working like he wanted to argue some more, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. With a final glance at the hallway Dean had disappeared down, he turned sharply and stomped out the front door, pausing only to grab his jeans off the floor. Bobby listened for the sound of the Impala’s engine, almost positive that Sam would take himself as far as possible from Bobby and everything associated with him, but the only thing he heard was the soft patter of the shower.

Sighing, he padded into the guest room to find a clean pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt for Dean. The clothes were Sam’s, which meant they’d be a little baggy on the boy, but they’d do for now. He left them on the floor just outside of the bathroom and then went to the living room to wait, wincing at the state it was in. Everything had happened so quickly that he wasn’t sure how much was the demon’s fault, and how much was from … that.

“Damn it, John, you asshole,” he grumbled. There was no doubt in his mind that the way John had raised his boys was at the root of this thing that he was getting closer and closer to actually facing. John was the one who had cut them off from society: had taught them to rely on no one but each other.

To be completely honest with himself, Bobby hadn’t been all that surprised to see the two of them wrapped around each other. Sam had been too _aware_ of his brother the last few times the boys had come here with John. Once or twice Bobby had caught him staring at Dean, his eyes heated and his jaw slack.

And Dean … well, it was like Bobby had just told Sam. Dean’s entire world revolved around his brother. Bobby had always suspected that was part of Dean’s problem with relationships: the boy just didn’t have enough left for anyone else after he finished giving to Sam.

Bobby couldn't have cared less about the whole gay thing: he’d known plenty of hunters who leaned that way, and he would have been proud to hunt with any one of them. He didn’t even mind horribly that they were brothers. It wasn’t anything he’d been raised to be comfortable with, of course, but they weren’t hurting anyone, and unless the Winchesters were a hell of a lot odder than he’d ever suspected, there wasn’t much chance of them having two-headed babies.

If he had to face up to what was really bothering him, he supposed that he was worried about Sam’s intentions. And if that didn’t make him sound like the overprotective papa of a sixteen-year-old virgin, nothing ever would. He loved Sam like a son—loved both of them like sons—but that didn’t mean that he was blind to Sam’s tendency to run off when the going got tough.

The boy had first tried running away when he was fourteen: John had tanned Sam’s hide for that, and given Dean a dressing down in private that had been, in Bobby’s opinion, both harsh and unwarranted. Then there had been Stanford, and the less said on _that_ subject, the better: Bobby had heard enough about Palo Alto from both John and Dean during those years that he’d actually threatened to find a witch who would render them mute. And a little over a year ago, Sam had run off on Dean twice. Bobby had received frantic phone calls from Dean both times, and although a demon had been responsible for his second disappearance, the first was all Sam.

If this was just some kind of … of _fling_ for Sam, then Dean would be … Well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Where’s Sam?”

Bobby jumped, startled, and then glanced up to see Dean standing hesitantly just inside the living room. Dean looked all of ten years old in his brother’s clothes, and his still-damp hair sticking up every which way.

“Out back in the garage taking a shower.” Or, you know, cursing Bobby’s name.

Dean stood there awkwardly for a moment and then muttered, “So I’ll just …” He trailed off and started to turn around.

“Hold up,” Bobby said, and Dean froze. The ten-year-old was gone: a cornered animal had taken his place. Rising to his feet, Bobby announced, “We need to talk.”

Dean flinched.

Bobby’s heart constricted painfully. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“I know that,” Dean lied, and then inched backwards into the hallway. “I’m kinda tired right now, though, so maybe—”

“ _Now_ , Dean,” Bobby said, pulling out John’s Marine-voice again. Just as he had before, and as Bobby had known he would, Dean caved.

Shoulders hunched, he took a few steps back into the living room. “Okay, shoot.”

“How about we do this in the kitchen? You look like you could use a beer.”

They ended up at the table, Dean cradling a bottle of King Cobra and not drinking it. His eyes were fastened on the table, and he kept recoiling whenever Bobby moved too quickly. Like he was expecting Bobby to beat the shit out of him at any moment.

 _Best get this done quick,_ Bobby told himself, and then said bluntly, “It’s not your fault.”

Dean’s head came up, a faint gleam of surprise in his dull eyes. “You’re not … mad?”

Oh hell, Dean thought that Bobby was talking about his relationship with Sam. “I’m not upset about you and Sam, but that’s not what I was talking about.”

Dean’s eyes dropped again. “Oh.”

“I was talking about what that bitch said before she zipped back to Hell.”

“Oh,” he repeated with even less intonation than his first attempt.

“Dean, look at me.”

Slight movement of Dean’s head, almost too faint to be a denial.

“ _Look at me_ ,” Bobby demanded, and when Dean reluctantly obeyed he caught the boy’s gaze and held it. “You. Are. Not. Responsible.”

Dean’s lips twisted sardonically. “Really? She dropped dead on her own, huh? For no reason whatsoever. Is that it?”

“There was no way for you to know what would happen,” Bobby pressed.

“I’ve seen incubus attacks, Bobby,” Dean snapped, and his hand tightened on the bottle. “I’m not a civilian.”

“You didn’t know you wouldn’t be able to control it,” Bobby insisted. “And you didn’t know that the woman was pregnant, did you?”

Dean’s breath hitched at the ‘p’ word, but he recovered quickly. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Because if you had, you wouldn’t’ve so much as held her hand,” Bobby pointed out. “You’re not a murderer, Dean.”

Dean’s breathing had gone ragged again, and Bobby sensed that the boy was nearing the end of his ability to submit to this conversation. Which meant that it was time to use that ace he had stuffed up his sleeve.

“If anyone’s to blame for that fiasco, it’s Sam.”

Dean shot up from his seat like he’d been electrocuted, hurled his bottle across the room, where it shattered messily, and then lunged across the kitchen table to grab Bobby by the collar. Bobby let the boy haul him up out of his chair and spin him into the cabinets.

“Don’t you say that,” Dean spat, muscles trembling like it was taking everything he had not to pound Bobby’s head back into the wood. “Don’t you fucking talk about him like that!”

Bobby’s sense of self-preservation was telling him to take it back, but he’d come this far already, so he figured he’d better finish. Besides, if he knew Dean at all, then this was nothing that the boys hadn’t already discussed. Was nothing Dean hadn’t thought himself. He just didn’t like hearing Bobby say it.

“ _Sam_ made the deal, Dean. Not you. Sam’s the one who backed you into a corner.”

Dean went as still as stone, those changable eyes of his flaring the sullen green of a storm-wracked sea. For a moment, Bobby was afraid he’d miscalculated. Dean was pulling his right hand back, and he wasn’t armed right now, but neither of John Winchester’s boys had ever needed a weapon to kill someone.

 _Oh hell,_ Bobby thought faintly.

Then he grunted in surprise as Dean shoved him to one side. There was a loud crunching noise of breaking wood, and when he straightened and looked back, Dean’s right hand was buried in one of the cabinets. The boy looked calmer as he pulled his hand free again, but Bobby winced at the sight of the tiny blue splinters that were sticking out of his rapidly swelling knuckles.

Cautiously, he reached for Dean’s hand and Dean let him take it. Let Bobby sit him back down at the table and pick out the splinters and check to see if he’d broken anything.

“You’ll be okay,” Bobby said finally as he handed over a bag of ice. “Just try to avoid punching any more furniture for a while.”

Staring down at his hand, Dean muttered, “He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Neither did you,” Bobby responded promptly, and when Dean didn’t say anything else, he added, “Do you think Sam’s a murderer?”

“What?” Dean scowled. “Of course not. Why the hell would I?”

“He killed Steve Wendell.”

“He was fucking _possessed_ , Bobby, what do you—”

“You don’t think that the situation is similar?”

“I didn’t have a goddamned demon inside of me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Really?” Despite his apprehension, Bobby forced himself to smile wryly. “And here I thought that incubi were demonic creatures.”

“That’s—that’s different,” Dean argued, but for the first time he sounded uncertain.

Bobby sat across from the boy and waited for him to roll it around in his head some more.

After a few minutes, Dean said, “I’m not—it’s just the siren song, and the—the hunger—it’s not like I’m possessed or anything.”

“So you were in complete control of yourself at all times.”

“No, I … No.” Dean didn’t look like he was in the mood to throw any more punches, but Bobby could tell from the way his cheek was twitching that Dean’s mind was about two seconds away from shutting down on him again.

So instead of pushing it, he just said, “No one’s expecting you to stop blaming yourself for this overnight, but I want you to think about it. I want you to think real hard about the kind of situation you were in. Now, let me get you another beer. And try to actually drink this one, will you?”

Dean managed to choke down two beers, but when Bobby asked if he wanted some dinner, he shook his head and said he just wanted to crash for a while. Bobby browbeat the boy into taking his bed. If his suspicions were right, then Dean was going to be a mite restless; he never had been a particularly quiet sleeper, and with the nightmares that would likely be paying him a visit tonight, he’d wind up on the floor if he tried sleeping in anything smaller than a full-sized bed.

Dean had been asleep for about an hour, and Bobby was busy frying up some steaks in the kitchen when Sam finally popped up again. From the dirt and grease smudged on his skin, he didn’t seem to have found his way to the shower.

They regarded each other warily for a moment, and then Sam asked, “Where is he?”

“Sleeping. I put him in my room.”

His face darkened. “You’re not our father, Bobby. You can’t make us stop—”

“I don’t expect it would make a difference to you if John _did_ tell you to quit what you’re doing with Dean: you never were very good at following orders. But that’s not why I put him in there.”

The suspicion on Sam’s face told him plain as day that Sam found that statement highly suspect. “Why, then?”

“Dean’s bound to have a few bad dreams tonight, and I didn’t want him falling out of bed and hurting himself.”

“Oh,” Sam said, mollified. He rubbed at the back of his neck and ducked his head a little. “How—how is he?”

Bobby gave the steaks a prod with a fork. “I gave him a few things to think about. You’ve got to realize, though, that this is gonna be hard for him. You can’t push him on it.”

“I know,” Sam whispered. He stood there quietly for a few minutes while the sounds and smells of cooking meat filled the kitchen. Then Bobby heard him take a deep breath before offering, “Hey, man, about today: I was just worried about Dean, and I—I guess I took it out on you. I’m sorry.”

It would be so easy to just shrug and laugh it off, but Bobby suspected that the Winchesters would be out of here before sunup tomorrow. He’d peeled back a few of Dean’s protective layers this afternoon, and the boy wouldn’t want to see him again for a while. If he wanted to confront Sam about this relationship that he’d started with his brother, then he was going to have to do it now.

“Before I accept your apology, I want to ask you a question.” Bobby couldn’t quite keep the grimness out of his voice.

The tentative smile on Sam’s face faltered. “What about?”

“What you’re doing with Dean. I want to know if you’re serious about this, Sam. Because if you aren’t, then we have ourselves a spot of trouble.”

He’d expected Sam’s anger to return, but instead Sam’s face broke out into a broad grin. “Are you giving me the ‘don’t hurt my daughter, cause I’ve got a shotgun and I’m not afraid to use it’ speech?” he asked.

Bobby flushed and tugged at his cap. “Well, your dad’s not around to give it. And let’s face it, Sam. You’ve got a history of bailing on your brother, and—”

“—and I’m not going anywhere,” Sam finished for him. “Dean and I—this is it, Bobby, okay?”

Scanning Sam’s eyes for an indication that he was telling the truth, Bobby prodded, “For how long?”

“As long as he wants me,” Sam answered simply. “I love him, and he loves me, and that’s … well, that’s a lot. That’s everything.”

It was said with such finality and assurance that, despite himself, Bobby felt his concern slip away. He cleared his throat and then nodded, cracking a grin.

“Better be. Cause I’ve got _three_ shotguns, and I’m not afraid to use them.”


	11. Epilogue

They left Bobby’s at Dean’s insistence early the next morning, when the sun was still trying to decide whether it wanted to rise or not. Sam was tempted to wake Bobby up and yell at him when he caught sight of Dean’s bandaged right hand, but managed to restrain himself. Dean had been hurt a lot worse than a few swollen knuckles and some cuts on Sam’s watch.

He tentatively suggested that they stay at Bobby’s for a few more days. Dean moved his head to the right. Back to center. To the left. Back to center again. _No._

Sam spent the rest of the day in a kind of daze while his brother drove. Everything seemed to have been turned on its head, as though at some point yesterday he’d stepped through a mirror and into Looking Glass Land. He should have been happy, now that things were settled between him and Dean: should have been relieved and relaxed. He and Dean should have been grinning at each other like idiots. Shouldn’t have been able to keep their hands off each other.

Instead, Dean barely spoke, and he wouldn’t really look at Sam. He moved as though he'd aged about forty years overnight. Sam ached to do something for him, but all of his opening gambits went ignored.

When they stopped for the night, and Dean asked for two queens, Sam didn’t argue.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Over the next few weeks, Sam kept expecting Dean to snap himself out of it, or to break down and at least _talk_ to him using words of more than one syllable. Twice, despite Bobby’s warning, he tried to force a conversation about what had happened, and Dean walked out on him both times. When he came stumbling back, he smelled of alcohol and smoke, but not sex.

That particular avenue of release wasn’t safe anymore.

Sam was so wrapped up in trying to fix his brother that when Dean slid into bed with him almost four weeks after they left Bobby’s, his only thought was: _finally, he’s getting better_. Beyond accidental, casual brushes, they hadn’t touched at all since that horrible afternoon.

“Hey,” Sam said, putting an uncertain hand on Dean’s arm.

But the eyes Dean turned up to him were shuttered, and all he said was, “I need to feed.”

Oh. Right.

Sam didn’t think he’d be able to perform with Dean so detached, but it turned out that it wasn’t a problem. All Dean had to do was let the siren song loose and they were good to go.

Dean relaxed a little once Sam was inside him. His eyes closed as he let himself get lost in the sensations, and his hands and legs came up to pull Sam closer. When Sam tried to reach his brother’s mind again, though, he found that wall staunchly in place, mended and reinforced with barbed wire.

He came with a sob that he muffled in Dean’s shoulder, and then pulled out gently. He reached for Dean, who was still hard and needing, and Dean rolled away. Climbed awkwardly out of the bed and went into the bathroom.

Sam was still awake, his pillow damp with his tears, when his brother came out an hour later. Dean went straight to his own bed, rolled onto his side, and was still.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

After almost an entire year of not speaking with Dean except to wonder whether they were after a zombie or a revenant, or to ask him to pass the salt, Sam was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to get his brother back.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, while they were hunting what seemed to be the vengeful spirit of a Civil War-era soldier, Sam became concerned that Dean might shatter apart irreparably. The spirit was targeting children, and the death toll over the years had been staggering. Not wanting to expose his brother to that kind of grief, Sam suggested that he interview some of the bereaved on his own. Dean told him to stop being an emotional fuckwit and get in the goddamned car.

It was the most he’d said directly to Sam about something non-case-related in months.

One of the last parents they questioned on that first day was Tracy Cabot: a single mother who had lost her son, David, almost seven years ago. Tracy’s four-year-old daughter Harriet was still very much alive, however, and Dean couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. Sam wasn’t surprised—he’d seen his brother do the same thing every time they came across a young, smiling girl for about a year now—but he was a little nervous about Tracy’s reaction. Dean had gotten into a scuffle with one overprotective father _(if you counted getting punched and skulking away a ‘scuffle’)_ , and several mothers had threatened to call the police.

While Dean was busy discussing the merits of various Pokémon characters with Harriet, Tracy pulled Sam aside and he thought, _here it comes._

Instead of telling them to leave and never come back, however, Tracy asked, “How long ago did he lose his daughter?”

Sam blinked, startled, and then turned his gaze on his brother. Dean was smiling as he walked around the living room with a giggling Harriet attached to his leg, but it was a brittle expression. Sam’s chest gave that slow, dull ache that he was all too familiar with these days.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything,” Tracy said, still in that hushed, pitying tone.

“No,” Sam managed. “No, it’s fine. We, uh, we don’t really talk about it.” He paused to do the math in his head and then answered, “Eleven months.”

Tracy rested her hand on Sam’s arm. “It’ll get better,” she promised, and then asked them to stay for dinner.

Dean spent the entire meal building statues out of his mashed potatoes for Harriet’s amusement. Afterwards, he dropped Sam off at the motel and drove away without a word. Sam gave his brother a few hours to brood before calling a taxi and going to collect him from the nearest bar.

Surprisingly, Dean wasn’t drunk when Sam brought him home: he seemed to have spent the night nursing a single Corona. He immediately headed into the bathroom to shower when they got back, and Sam stripped down to his boxers and climbed into bed. He was half-asleep when there was a dip in the mattress, and when blinked his way awake, it was to Dean sliding under the covers with him.

“Dean?” he murmured uncertainly. It had only been ten days since they’d last been together, which meant that it wasn’t time for Dean to feed yet. And Dean didn’t seem interested in sex.

Edging in close, he tossed one leg across Sam’s and rested his head on his chest. His arm came around and draped over Sam’s stomach. Sam lay there as quietly as he could, terrified that the slightest movement or sound would shatter the moment. Whatever this was, it felt fragile, and as easily destroyed as a butterfly wing.

For long moments, Dean was silent. Then he said, hoarsely, “I didn’t mean to.”

Sam didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. The pressing tension—the need to _get this right, don’t screw it up, don’t hurt him_ —eased. He turned his head awkwardly to kiss Dean’s forehead. Pretended that he couldn’t see the tears streaking his brother’s cheeks.

“I know, Dean,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t, not really. Not yet. But for the first time, Sam actually believed that it might be.


End file.
